53 lines
4.1 KiB
Text
53 lines
4.1 KiB
Text
---
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layout: post
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section-type: post
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title: "Ad Hell"
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category: tech
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tags: [ 'software' ]
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---
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I never click on ads, because I don't see any value in them.
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During the last ten years I clicked (intentionally) on literally one ad from a <a href="http://bellroy.com/" target="_blank">wallet company</a>.
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But, this company would be also my first result in my (incognito) <a href="https://www.google.no/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=4saeVZ7KE6qr8we3woDICA#q=slim+card+wallet" target="_blank">Google search</a>.
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And I was actually planning to buy a slim card wallet, I didn't start googling because of the ad.
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So, did I buy the product of the ad?
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Yes.
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Did the ad convince me to buy the product?
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No.
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An image of a product with a catchy phrase will never convince me to buy it.
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I want to do my research and evaluate my options before buying anything.
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After I evaluated a few of the "slim card wallets" Google results, I chose the one from the ad, for specific reasons, irrelevant to the displayed ad.
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3650 days, 1 intentionally clicked ad, 0 value, <a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3650+*+3+%2F+%2860+*+60%29" target="_blank">3</a> hours of my life so far wasted on closing tabs from ads that I clicked by mistake.
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This is clearly a broken experience of the web.
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Have you tried to browse the web with <a href="https://adblockplus.org/" target="_blank">AdBlock</a>?
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The web is just beautiful without ads.
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The fact that Google <a href="https://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-for-android-removed-from-google-play-store" target="_blank">removed</a> it from Play store,
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indicates that it caught their attention, which means that there is a significant number of people who vouch for an ad-less web.
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Ads are killing the UX and make products look cheap.
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<a href="http://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/" target="_blank">90%</a> of Google's revenues come from ads,
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and this makes them really aggressive.
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YouTube is frustrating its users by forcing them to watch an ad before watching their video.
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And until recently, Google was placing an ad at exactly the same point where the first search result was normally, but with a latency in its rendering.
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As a result, I was clicking one ad on every search for several days (muscle memory).
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I'm pretty sure that they made a ton of money from this hack, but they just broke even more their UX.
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Microsoft has started adding ads in its products.
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Skype is wasting my pixels and my battery on ads and I was really disappointed when I <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8514345/windows-spotlight-lock-screen-with-ads" target="_blank">read</a> about (optionally) displaying app ads on the lockscreen of Windows 10.
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Facebook has also ads, but at least they don't display them at their Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram apps.
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On the other hand, I haven't seen any ads in Apple products.
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This is what I would do in any of my products.
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But someone could argue that offering an ad-free paid version of it, is a better option.
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This is a trend coming from smartphone apps which was also adopted by Amazon at their Kindle series,
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by offering a cheaper model stuffed with ads, next to their normal model.
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If you really care about delivering a delightful experience, then you shouldn't bundle any ads to it, or at least you should compromise with the opt-in/out model.
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Make your users love your product so much, that they would pay for it, like Apple, Spotify and many more companies did.
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Don't forget that WhatsApp's and Instagram's value was defined by their enormous user base.
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Which means that until the <a href="http://www.name.com/blog/general/business/2013/10/why-are-startups-turning-to-io/" target="_blank">io</a> bubble bursts, you can stick to a totally free of charge service, with the hope of grooming a few millions of users.
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And if your users don't love your product enough to pay for it, don't blame them.
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Blame yourself and improve the experience that you offer.
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P.S.: How to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/27dihm/lpt_you_can_turn_off_the_annoying_skype_banner/" target="_blank">disable</a> Skype ads.
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P.P.S.: Olivia pointed out "Technically, in any 10 year interval there would have been 2 leap years, therefore 3,652 days"
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