Re:Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14
by kspacewalk2 on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @02:26PM
(#24285565)
Sure. As long as the flip side of that argument is equally appreciated - ad revenue pays for the apps, so less revenue will necessarily lead to fewer "free" apps and/or fewer "free" features and/or worse quality. It's a rational response of the intermediary (i.e. app makers) to the customers (i.e. advertisers) having less access to the product (i.e. us).
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> less revenue will necessarily lead to fewer "free" apps and/or fewer "free" features and/or worse quality
I agree with "fewer" and strongly disagree with "worse quality."
Re:Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14
by kspacewalk2 on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:01AM
(#24305703)
What's the incentive to spend money to constantly improve, fix bugs and update the features on every OS release? If you consider the entire development lifecycle, quality costs developer money every bit just as much as new features.
Re:Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14
by IggleSniggle on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @03:59PM
(#24286612)
Is it wrong that I’ve consistently had better experiences with paid apps than advertising supported apps? Perhaps it has something to do with the alignment of incentives.
Anyway, I don’t begrudge anyone who has worked in the ad business, but I do wonder if folks might be happier optimizing for something of real lasting value in comparison to the gambling business.
Ad-funded apps are usually garbage. Prime example is the Facebook app, or Messenger.
Newspapers had plenty of ad revenue before tracking. Apps could be monetized by ads that are targeted based on the in-app content only.
Then why did they almost all go bankrupt?
Craigslist, basically.
Classified ads were the difference between profit and loss for a lot of local newspapers. Craigslist devastated that market in a matter of years.
Commercial ads were doing fine, and I bet there are a lot of local businesses who wish there was still a local newspaper they could advertise in. But it wasn't enough.
Re:Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14
by squarefoot on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @07:15PM
(#24288377)
Some went bankrupt because one can't store a forest into a memory card. It's all about costs.
A physical newspaper costs a lot more to produce than a blog, and doesn't scale like one as well: even printing a handful of copies would cost a lot more than serving millions of people through a blog.
free != quality
ads == worse quality