Ads in Apps

[PeterMikeWarden]

I'm sitting here with a cup of cold coffee and had a interesting conversation about ads in apps with somebody.
And I got a strange thought.

Today are ads in apps normal .... but ..... isn't it not more like something like Al Capones racketeering?

It sounds provocativve but think it through.

Companys offer apps with ads included NOT to earn anymore money to develop apps.
I recognised so many apps from different "companys" where the apps are all the same from the same developer and the ads get used as pressure to pay for it not to see them anymore.

So the money or the payment is not anymore there to pay for developing software.
Today is the money for that to get saved from ads.
You have to pay this people who started the trouble in the first case?

So many people say, it's only a ad, who cares.
And it pays the developer.
No, it doesn't.

Yes, it was from the beginning so.
But today it's so I want to send or read a simple eMail and my old GMail app showed me only the eMail and the newest GMail app brings ads in push up notifications direct on the screen and if you turn that of you get also no notivications anymore for new eMails.

For example I paid for a game I liked to get rid of the ads.
Afterwards I realised still somehow the game was restricted because functions you could see are not working.
A app store search brought me the info the same game got offered from different companys.

What happened?
There was one developer who sold the game for different prices for different leves how far it works to different people, who packed it full with ads and offered it as download with "pay for removing ads" option.

I get remembered on Al Capones racketeering to pay to be safe from him.

Today the complete mobile and Android situation get more and more pushed in a corner your mobile is only a ad transmission tool.

And you can turn off whatever you want, after the next update it's turned on again and still such simple apps like a eMail app get a video phone function and in the same moment push up ads on your screen.

I got told the unnecessary function video telephone (I have 4 other apps with the same function) is the reason for the update but in the end the dominant. function is ads on the screen?

If the developer want to make money, offer a 30 days test version as it was usual for years.
But today you don't make money anymore with apps.
You make money with ads.

....... spontan 2nd provocative thought .......
Company pay for ads.
The same ads anoy people so much they pay for it to remove them.
So .... who profit from the ads?
The companys who payed for the ads?
The people who are so anoyd about so many ads they don't look at them anymore?
Or the guys in the middle who bring the apps in the app store who get payed for the ads AND get paid for it to remove them?

The complete ad culture is in my eyes complete living for itself and not anymore for that ads was thought about in the first case : to advertise for a product.
Only companys like Google or the guys who offers ad controlled apps really earn money on it.
The companys in the first case who pay for it there ads goes online and the users at the other end who pay for it to get rid of the ads are the loosers in my eyes.

Provocative thoughts or only a monday morning problem because I got a cold coffee?

 

[Dannydet]

I think your coffee went cold a long time ago.
Android is open source, so anybody can create an app for Android, and there are good Developers and bad developers out there. Do your due diligence and read reviews before you lambaste Android developers as a whole... And, no, there's no "racketeering" going on here. Good Developers are making good apps of their own free will, so if they are asking for payment, it's called making a living, period.
Think about that the next time you buy yourself a hot coffee....

 

[Hadron]

Yes, speaking as someone who hates ads I think you are misunderstanding this totally.

You don't like ads in the GMail app? Use a different email app. I have both free and paid email apps which have never shown me a single ad. But don't use an app and then complain about the ads, because there are alternatives and it is you who is choosing not to use them.

The idea that "ads used to pay developers but now they are a way to push you into paying for apps" is paranoid bullshit, I'm afraid. Ads still pay developers, and having an option to pay not to have them is something that's been around as long as android. Prior to that you paid for apps full stop - and apps for the PDAs that preceded smartphones cost a lot more than Android apps, even without correcting for inflation, though even they seemed cheap compared to PC software. So nothing has changed except that you now get your apps for very little indeed, and if you value the time and effort that goes into developing and maintaining software for you too little even to pay for that (which is the attitude of too many entitled children of all ages) you have the option of just accepting ads instead. Of course there are a few people who choose to donate their time for free to write and maintain apps that neithing require payment nor include ads, and you can find examples of those for most important functions if you want. But nobody has a right to expect others to work for them for free, so whether you choose a freeware app, a paid app, or an ad-supported app, the one thing you don't have a right to do is whinge about it.

As for ads vs paid, from the developers' point of view that's a choice between a very low income per install or a larger but one-off income (while maintenance and updates are an ongoing effort). See the problem? And if there are too many ads, or developers switch to advertising SDKs that bring them more money, I'm afraid that the only people who are to blame are the majority of smartphone owners who believe that it's unreasonable to expect them to pay at all for the sortware they use, never mind pay an amount that could actually support the development. Blame them, and nobody else.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

The entire Internet was monetized by ads. As hard as this may be to believe there were a few years without ads...
Damn I'm old.

 

[Trom]

The entire Internet was monetized by ads. As hard as this may be to believe there were a few years without ads...
Damn I'm old.

I remember when the www first came into being, it was mostly colleges and universities that hosted, and much of that was simply Gopher with pictures. That sure didn't last long.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

^You had to know the url back then.^
Good times. Bulletin Boards got me an MVP from Microsoft as an everyday user.
I had the roast beef in Seattle.
Google doesn't roll like Microsoft did.

 

[Hadron]

I remember when the www first came into being, it was mostly colleges and universities that hosted, and much of that was simply Gopher with pictures. That sure didn't last long.

No, I remember when the www first came into being: it was almost entirely CERN and associated research groups that hosted it, and there weren't any pictures (they came later, after the Mosaic browser was developed).

 

[Trom]

No, I remember when the www first came into being: it was almost entirely CERN and associated research groups that hosted it, and there weren't any pictures (they came later, after the Mosaic browser was developed).

Cern had this browser called www3 (?) and it could display pictures, I seem to remember. My internet access back then was simply a telnet into s Unix shell, and when Cern came up with www, my browser was lynx, friggen text mode.

 

[Hadron]

www3 sometimes appears in web addresses (or appeared - I can't remember seeing it for a while).
I couldn't remember what the early CERN text-based browser was called, but doing a little history searching turned-up this thing, which I definitely have used. We switched relatively quickly once the NCSA released Mosaic.

I never really had the patience for line mode browsers - used them on occasion, but tried to avoid. Unix shells (or their equivalent), on the other hand, I still use extensively: a quick glance through this laptop tells me that I've currently got about 15 of them open (I find them more efficient than the GUI).

 

[dontpanicbobby]

No, I remember when the www first came into being: it was almost entirely CERN and associated research groups that hosted it, and there weren't any pictures (they came later, after the Mosaic browser was developed).

Before Mosaic?

 

[Trom]

Before Mosaic?

There was a competing hypertext project headed up by some San Francisco hippie, forget his name, called "Xanadu", never got off of the ground due to the insistence of perfection for round one.

 

[Hadron]

Before Mosaic?

At CERN there were a few text-based browsers before Mosaic. The idea of embedding images or other media was there from the beginning, but Mosaic was the first usable cross-platform client that supported it.