>The "ethics" discussion usually revolves around the ideas that "the ads pay
>for the content on many sites and if you don't see the ads, you're stealing
>the content" and "if the advertisers aren't supported, we won't be able to
>give you the content any more...because we have to get paid for what we do."
i've been through this debate several dozen times with the marketers who
work here at the newspaper. by that definition, i'm a thief for surfing
with image autoloading turned off. the argument fails for several
reasons.
1: it falls prey to a two-value fallacy. it assumes that either everyone
gets the ads, or no on does. if everyone sees them, the business will
survive/if no one sees them, the business will fail. that's a badly
oversimplified model of actual usage. in real life, there will always be
a percentage of users who see the ads, and a percentage who don't.
reducing the issue to two values makes it impossible to discuss the
relative sizes of those two groups.
2: the argument carries an assumption that each page request costs the
provider a certain amount. there's a measure of truth in that, but the
finances are more complicated than the argument implies. the actual cost
of a page request is a few seconds' worth of electricity and bandwidth.
that's negligible compared to the waste inherent in normal operations,
because few sites run at even a significant fraction of their theoretical
maximum.
all i'm 'stealing' is a small fraction of what would otherwise be thrown
away. that theft is mitigated by the fact that i'm not /using/ as much of
the provider's bandwidth as i would have done by loading the image and
ignoring it.
3: the argument implicitly equates the right to draw profit with the right
to survive. if enough users view banner ads to cover the operating
expenses for the site, survival is no longer an issue. the site can
support itself indefinitely on those users. any ad impressions beyond
that are pure profit.
if you know the expenses and price structure for a site with ads, it's
possible to calculate the exact amount of ad load necessary to cover the
expenses for that site. that amount is usually a vanishingly small
fraction of the theoretical load. in the long run, the argument above
often boils down to a demand for arbitrarily high margins.
4: there are many other financial models for online content, not to
mention other ways of putting ad content into pages. banner ads just
happen to be easy, and inexpensive to implement. people use them because
they work, but if they didn't, people would be using something else. this
ties in with the issue of margins, because many of the current alternatives
are less effective than banner ads. many people who use the argument
above will also refuse to consider any other potential revenue stream which
offers lower margins.
5: i personally know of three models for pricing banner ads.. pay per
click-through, pay per impression, and pay for position. the
click-through and per-impression pricing models are affected by users who
refuse to view the image, but the pay for position model isn't. it's also
the simplest to implement, and the most common in deployment.
in the pay for position model, an advertiser pays for their ad to be
included at a given point in the provider's site. the provider makes no
guarantee about the number of impressions or click-throughs that ad will
get, only that the image tag will be included in the given page at the
given location.
the distinction is important. the provider makes no guarantee that the
image /will/ be seen, only that it /can/ be seen. the revenue stream is
not threatened in any way by the users who refuse to view the ads. many
advertisers will pay strictly for the potential of being seen, even if they
know that users might not load the image.
refusing to load images does changes the numbers for the click-through and
per-impression models. providers compensate for that by raising the unit
price.
6: breadth of market coverage has indirect value for the provider. the
cost of denying access to pages is measured in loss of business
opportunities. the value of granting access is therefore measured in
increased opportunities.. the sales call which is easier to close because
the client comes to your site regularly (with image-loading off), the
client who initiates contact because your site is popular, etc.
George: if you're following the thread (and haven't fallen asleep yet),
what would be an off-the-cuff guess at the difference in value between
closing a sale in six calls, and closing it in five (or three)? you're
far more likely to know the numbers than i am.
the value of the benefits has to be balanced against the loss in ad sales
to produce a complete picture. i don't have numbers to support the idea,
but the losses are so small that i can't help feeling any benefit at all
would outweigh them.
7: the whole mindset behind banner ads is based on assumptions about the
web which contradict its reality. it's an attempt to push unwanted
information onto the user, in an environment where the user has control
over what they want to receive. the fact that most people use browsers
which automatically load images is a convention, but isn't fundamental to
the nature of the web. anyone who capitalizes on that convention has to
accept the risk that it might change. the premise that site providers
have the right to demand ad views is an argument against the user's right
to select content for themselves.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 'net geek..
been there, done that, have network, will travel.
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