The answer may not be pleasing, but it's true: because "paid subscribers" represent a valuable advertising demographic/segment. They are nearly certain you are human traffic, and you have enough disposable income that you pay for news.
You can pretty much make this argument for everything - Ferraris should be plastered by LCDs with ads then. Business class airplanes filled with blinking video ads. Entrances to highend butiques crowded with people pushing ad leaflets into rich peoples hands....
This does happen in other places. Do you ever notice that your in-flight magazine has ads? You've already paid for the flight. Your in-theater movie kicks off with trailers and previews -- you have already paid for the movie ticket. And so on.
This happens in the back of cabs in a lot of places I seem to remember and it’s incredibly difficult to switch off... we essentially are heading for some super weird dystopian sci-fi film right now. It’s terrifying.
This already happens on Air Canada (although at least the ads are not personalized). Before each movie or show you play on your IFE screen in economy class, they make you watch two 30 seconds ads. I was very annoyed, especially since AC tickets are already overpriced (little/no competition on domestic flights in Canada).
If there IFE system is like all the others that I've experienced so far, you'll lose more time trying to find the start of the movie than you'd lose by letting the ads run :(
Passengers in airline seats seem to make advertisers drool as you can't get much more of a captive audience and for that long in nearly any other situation.
I know for a fact, this is all coming and has already started, and is going to get even more invasive.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the security theatre before boarding and advertisement brainwash after getting to the seats would start to provoke fury sprees among some at least passengers.
Don't worry, they'll be monitoring your sentiment during boarding and passengers that appear agitated will be calmly denied access to board. And you'll be monitored in your seat as well during the flight.
It's not Orwell's imagination anymore, it's reality. Only privacy law can stop it, maybe.
> they'll be monitoring your sentiment during boarding and passengers that appear agitated will be calmly denied access to board. And you'll be monitored in your seat as well during the flight.
Disappointing is that this is the more likely outcome, rather than easing the sensory overload, stress, and discomfort.
To be fair, there are attempts at this being made too. But they come in a weird fashion, for example - seats get smaller but are higher quality. Air quality on airplanes and lighting has generally improved but flights are getting longer.
It’s an interesting balance but it always reminds me that flying through the sky in a tin can is not entirely natural.
Of course, some of the security measures are for your comfort and safety as well. It’s just where the line is between for your good and for theirs that is tough to identify.
The single most awful thing about flying with Hawaiian Airlines is that they sold out years ago to advertisers. The flight attendants read commercials to the passengers during the safety brief. And lately, there have been some credit card companies advertising this way and so the flight attendants will literally walk up and down the aisles giving every passenger a credit card application. It is foul and atrocious. Just charge $10 more per seat, you goblins.
Ads on the back of he seat in an airplane are very common in European airlines. One of the most obnoxious, intrusive, literally in-your-face ads as it’s 40cm from one’s face with no real option to get away from it.
Not on RyanAir flights you can't. Not unless you're using earplugs. It's hard to sleep when you're constantly being upsold something, including over the announcement system at least 3 times per flight.
Use a page from the inflight magazine (or the safety card) to cover the screen. I do this on flights that insist on keeping the screen on no matter what.
Ryanair wouldn't pay for the screens to show you ads ;)
They do, however, upsell you in person by making some hate-my-job contracted flight attendants go through the cabin no less than three times trying to sell various things to you.
Public media and TV in Europe, including the one with the largest budget on the entire planet - German, play and display ads even though are sponsored from compulsory per-household fees.
The BBC often congratulates itself on not showing ads. Instead, every radio show is 50% 'trailers' for other BBC things which you'll hear half a dozen times by the end of a workday.
Swedish public service TV is the same. Guess all the 1-hour shows are down to 27 minutes of content or so, leaving huge gaps needing to be filled with some .. air.
Is this actually a market inefficiency? Maybe this is an opportunity to discover how humanity can still make information known about products and services without having to make our entire cultures about consumption.
I mean, advertising is about information sharing in a way. Can it be more efficient without clobbering art and media?
Ads are less about "information sharing" and more about manipulation though.
If I think about "information sharing", I'd imagine that the information is the thing of value to be shared and the goal is to enable the recipient to perform their own decisions with and increased base of background information.
However, ads work the other way around: You start with certainly outcomes that you would potential customers arrive at in their decisions and then think which information you can deliver to them to reach that outcome.
Good points. So what does an ad that doesn't have a behavioral component look like, and can they be presented in a different way? And could we still make that effective? Or is it a class of ad that is ethical vs not?
I know I'm way off in the weeds here, just brainstorming.
"Company X sells a product Y which is meant to solve the problem Z, and does so through features A, B and C."
That's it. The ad just informed consumers about existence of a particular company and product, made it clear what the product is for, and listed its important qualities (especially differentiating from other similar products).
That's what you do when you actually care to inform, and not manipulate, customers. Since pretty much no ads are like this, I call bullshit when someone says advertising is important because it informs people.
Well, I don't think it would be an ad anymore, because if the goal is to inform a consumer, the goal can't be to promote a particular product/brand/company.
So maybe something like independently ran price comparison sites would work?
So what does that mean? That we need to be shoved ads in our faces at every step of our life even if we pay for products? Just because someone wants to make even more money? What's your takeaway here?
The takeaway is that advertisers don't care what you think and do in fact believe that they should shove ads in your face every step of your life, even if you pay for a product.
Welcome to the world. Half the users of this site are actively perpetuating the corporate dystopia we inhabit.
I'm sure they'd start caring if everyone started blocking their ads instead of accepting them. Maybe one day we'll have augmented reality glasses with built in ad blockers; I wonder how they'd react to that.
Talking about advertisers, I think the main qualities we can credit them is grit and smarts.
Block their ads on the web ? you still have them on billboards if they’re local. They’ll mass DM whole regions if it makes economical sense. Your Netflix drama series will start mentionning them in passing. They’ll make ‘news’ pieces with a product CEO saving a baby chimpanzee that was not endangered in the first place.
You know they’ll find a way to your eyeballs by whatever mean, as long as it makes any sense to them.
Assuming we have sufficient control over our augmented reality glasses. If someone like google, MS, facebook, etc corner the market then I'd expect them to insert ads into reality.
I don't have a "takeaway", but the Bezos quote, "Your margin is my opportunity," comes to mind. We live in capitalism, and in this system, "good user experience" only matters insofar as it is profitable for whoever is providing that user experience. If ads for subscribers are so annoying that people stop subscribing, then companies might stop advertising to them. But if they are not annoying enough to affect those numbers, then it isn't that surprising that they try to earn more revenue from their attention. One other way to look at this: perhaps by advertising to subscribers, these publishers can afford to offer a lower subscription cost to their customers. Let's also remember that most publishing companies don't have massive digital revenue scale or growth, compared especially to the big tech companies. And let's also remember that big tech companies like Amazon and Google monetize customers "on the side" six ways from Sunday.
I guess what you are responding to with outrage, I am responding to with a shrug.
It's true - most news and magazine publishing companies are in a place of desperation. The internet has impacted the legacy publishing revenue model so severely that there hasn't been any clear model to pivot to despite two decades of attempts. Many major publishers have folded, many more will fold, and those that survive will eek by on meager subscriber revenue (which isn't as robust or easy to come by as some may think) and increasingly obtrusive programmatic advertising.
> If ads for subscribers are so annoying that people stop subscribing, then companies might stop advertising to them.
It also matters if there is any actual competition that does tings better. Cable TV is having a bad time, in large part it is because of ads, but it is only happening because of the streaming services.
Airlines are a competitive service, but newspapers are not.
In the Ferrari case, you just got one huge expensive advertisement of the company. Just because you are not famous. If you'd be famous, then the Ferrari would pay you for wearing their logo. If you are not, you have to pay them lots of money for the same.
Re: Ferraris - Part of the product is the aesthetic and function. The other part is that there are other vehicles just as sexy or cool looking as Ferrari - meaning, if there aren't good alternatives that don't have the advertising then they perhaps could get away with it; what an advertiser would be willing to pay a single fixed ad on a vehicle doesn't really put much of a dent in the cost of that vehicle, however ad revenue in digital form certainly covers a much higher portion of the cost of serving web content. Content that requires a lot of effort to produce however fits less of a Facebook average level of post content. It seems the answer is creating a competitive environment for investigative journalism, and then people will have options - if content is equal - to pay a platform that doesn't have ads.
For free products online that have an ad model, it's the VC complex perpetuating that model heavily - where the money is available initially and to scale quickly (because it's an easy calculation). The mantra isn't just "Move fast and break things" but also seems to be "if I don't do it - someone else will get there first" as part of the desire to be first-to-market (by any means) as a means to reach/capture a few of the main defense mechanisms of economies of scale and network effects; you don't need defense mechanisms if you have a good product however, and have a reasonable cost structure - it sure will be more profitable in the short-term though, not sustainable however. Facebook, Cambridge Analytica et al, perhaps needed to happen to wake people up to understand the importance of accountability and of community, moderation, and such.
TBF, the Ferrari IS the ad - for Ferrari and whatever aggregate-lifestyle-image you are promoting.
"Hey everyone, look at how I have succeeded to the point where I can drive car [X]"
Not that there is anything wrong with that, though.
For example - I like to wear the same hiker-couture gear everyday to feel comfortable, functional and good about myself appearance. I am an advertisement for my thinking and decision making capability.
I don't know if Ferraris sold here have this, but many cars sold in Poland have licence plate frame with dealer's name and contact even though you have no agreement with them to advertise their company when you're buying new car. For some (Mitsubishi iirc) they put some kind of semi translucent sticker on your trunk with dealer's name about 2 x 3 inches.
People generally let the dealer sock them with an additional $500 to cover car registration for them (so they don't have to go to the DMV themselves). When this happens, the dealer gets to install the plate for the customer, and they'll throw on the dealer frame at the same time.
After this point, customers don't have much reason to remove the plate or frame unless they really hate the ad, happen to be self-installing a rearview camera or are selling the car.
My car was from a dealer that went bust "Ward Subaru", after a service at a non-dealer service centre it came back with "Doncaster Subaru" frames on it!
Most dealers in the US do this via the license plate frame or stickers on the back. I think most people don't realize that you can remove them (and should). There should be some kind of rent payment for having it on your car.
Those are race team sponsorships. People pay the owner of the car to put those ads on the car. That’s the exact opposite of the point under discussion: the owner is getting revenue by choosing to put ads on the car, that is much different than Ferrari putting ads on a car you buy in order to make more money for Ferrari. Those sponsor ads make money for the owner of the car/team.
> Because your point is pretty shallow, to be honest. The simple fact is that such tactics do happen in virtually every situation you described.
Not to the same extent. That’s the point, and it’s an interesting question why this happens. What economic factors account for the differences in advertising between these two markets? It’s not “shallow” as your own shallow dismissal alleges.
> Your point really doesn't add much to a conversation, since its premise is faulty.
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Also I think Enzo Ferrari would argue that the F1 cars and team are the real Ferrari porduct. The road cars are just ads and merchandise for the race team. =P
We have to decide as a society to not support platforms or organizations who attempt to extract all possible value. This of course creates opportunity for competition, however with perhaps more difficulty once an incumbent has reached large economies of scale and has strong network effects.
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