When it comes to the internet, ads are a part of life.
It’s the business model du jour for nearly every major internet company. You see them on Facebook, they pop up in your mobile games, and you scroll through them on Twitter. We’re told that if we want these services for free we’ll need to see a few ads.
We think that we’re getting a great deal. We’re so used to seeing ads these days that we hardly even recognize that they’re there. We believe we’re getting free access to a great product and that all we need to do is tolerate something we barely notice is there.
What we don’t recognize (at least immediately) is that our experience is influenced materially by this trade.
It isn’t just about having to see ads. It’s also how those ads are served up to us (or how we are served up to those ads). In order to make a profit, these ad-based internet companies need to get as many ad clicks (or views) from you as possible. In the bestselling book Trust Me, I’m Lying, author Ryan Holiday explains that an ad-based business model actually hurts the quality of the site or app that you use
A perfect example of this is the slideshow feature most websites still use. Everyone can recall a time that they followed a link to an interesting list only to end up on a page with a slow slideshow version of the article. If you’re lucky it loads up to the first item on the list. Usually, it will be a useless title page. Slowly, you work through the list. You click the ‘next’ button, the page refreshes and the next list item appears (if it’s not an ad). The experience is slow and you wonder why the website couldn’t have just posted the list on one page.
This is a terrible experience. You’d think by now we’d live in a world where websites were more sophisticated and slideshows were more user-friendly. We do live in that world and there are great ways of presenting lists, but those better ways make less money.
The reason why the page has to refresh is so that more ads can be generated. As users, we want our information fast but fast is not what makes money for ad-based sites. Yelp doesn’t make money giving you the best restaurant recommendation immediately, it makes money giving you lots of options and putting restaurant ads up at the top of the list. They know that with so many options you’ll be overwhelmed. They know that serving up so many options will make it hard to decide and you’ll be more inclined to simplify your search by going with the top results (which Yelp will be paid for when you click on them to learn more).
We think we’re trading free access at the cost of viewing ads, but we’re really trading away functionality and the time it saves as well.
Different companies handle this in different ways. There’s always a balance that has to be struck between user experience and what makes money. But as long as the business is built on advertising, users will suffer. And while you might think that you’re used to things the way they are, you’re still being forced to waste precious time, and that time adds up.
Fortunately, businesses are starting to recognize the problems of an ad-based model. Free and ad-supported will be around for a long time, but you don’t have to put up with it. New websites and apps that are focused on quickly getting you in front of information instead of ads are launching daily. Keep an eye out for new opportunities that let you trade the slow slideshow for a modern user-friendly experience.
It’s fine to want free, but your time is valuable. Don’t settle for advertising chaos and inefficiency. You deserve better.
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