Re:Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
by URSpider94 on Saturday September 26, 2020 @02:14PM
(#24600878)
Twenty years ago, every self-respecting middle class household within a 50-mile radius of your newsroom subscribed to your paper from adulthood until death. Unless you lived in a major city like NY or Chicago, you likely had no competition for subscribers. And, every business in that radius bought ads in your paper.
Re:Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
by Nextgrid on Saturday September 26, 2020 @02:33PM
(#24601039)
The ads had some kind of human review so scams and Taboola/Outbrain weren't a thing and people trusted them which was a win-win for both the consumer, the newspaper and the advertiser.
Re:Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
by URSpider94 on Thursday October 01, 2020 @01:01PM
(#24653371)
Have you ever perused the ads in the back sections of old newspapers and magazines? There was all kinds of crazy stuff. I remember getting Boy's Life, the Boy Scout magazine, and there was an ad every single month for x-ray glasses. Do you think they worked??
That person sitting behind you also has to start pleading with you to sign up for a subscription the moment you look away from it to get your coffee.
Re:Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
by heavyset_go on Saturday September 26, 2020 @04:01PM
(#24601676)
Not only that, they start to guilt trip you if you don't watch all 60 seconds of that really hilarious ad that you didn't ask to see but they're sure you'll enjoy anyway.
Not really, because you would have paid for that paper. I get the criticisms about paywalls and pop ups and all that, but let’s acknowledge that they have to make money somehow or they won’t last.
Re:Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
by criddell on Saturday September 26, 2020 @01:22PM
(#24600481)
Paying for a digital subscription doesn't relieve you of those problems. They still want to send you notifications and they still track you as you use their site.
In fact, if you are used to ad blocking in the web browser, it can make the problem worse! Every digital subscription I’ve paid for put me onto multiple mailing lists, some of which are active multiple times a week, and required me to unsubscribe from them individually.
Re:Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
by hinkley on Saturday September 26, 2020 @01:27PM
(#24600518)
You understand that all the ads and classifieds subsidized the hell out of that paper, right?
They want $5 for some magazines now and there are so many ads at the beginning that you can’t find the fucking table of contents to locate the cover articles that grabbed your eye.
That’s pretty close to what pop ups do.
I’d imagine you’d start with the newspaper as it was 20 years ago: newsprint with some black text on it. Then you’d overlay some opaque paper over that with some text in it that said, “give us your address or phone number so we can contact you for breaking news”. Instead of a close button it would be something that people would have to tear off each page of the paper.
That’s not all though. Each paper would come with an actual person who would sit behind you and quietly take meticulous notes on which articles you read and how you reacted to them. That person would quietly leave with the notes, take it back to HQ, and tabulate which articles people engaged with the most. Over time the content with the lowest engagement would be trimmed and those journalists fired.
This is the world we live in today.