[Quotes trimmed to reminder size only, to make following the discussion easier]
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Section I: Motion, color, perception, interference
At 02:58 PM 09/09/2005 -0700, Marilyn Matty wrote:
>What I'm trying to say is that it's really not a matter of what you or I
>like. [...] And as I mentioned, advertising doesn't have to be loved for
>it to be effective - like the Mr. Whipple ads I mentioned.
And what I keep saying is that it's not a matter of like or dislike, but a
matter of interfering or not interfering. You keep bringing up Mr Whipple,
but Mr Whipple didn't interfere with people seeing the TV show. Had Mr
Whipple been overlaid on the TV show, he'd have been sent out to right
field. Moving ads DO INTERFERE with reading the content, and they interfere
greatly.
As Travis and others here have pointed out, I don't see anyone around here
saying advertising is inherently objectionable. It's objectionable when it
interferes with access to content, and that interference will be
detrimental even to advertising in the long run anyway because the
advertiser isn't cooperating with the content provider.
>But it's also important to draw a distinction between blinking, which is
>not necessarily a part of Flash ads, and motion, which usually is.
Blinking and moving have very similar effects on peripheral vision. There's
no need to draw any distinction in a discussion of interference with
perception. A large area blinking is just the extreme of motion.
>Color is extremely distracting - it causes chemical changes in the brain
>and in the eye and elicits physical reaction equal to that of movement.
Oh, heavens. No, color outside the fovea is nowhere nearly as distracting
as motion. Color IN the fovea has a strong effect, but outside the fovea
it's motion that's far more powerful. Only the fovea has an abundance of
the cone cells to detect color. This effect is extremely well known: if you
want to detect small movements, don't look directly where you expect them.
And guess what's focused our fovea when we're reading? The words! The
content! Once we look at the ads, then yes they are on the fovea and the
color is very important. But while we have the content on the fovea, it's
motion that's far more powerful on the rest of the retina.
>This sample is way, way, way too small to produce anything resembling
>reliable result given the number of people who use the internet.
The samples are plenty big enough. Most people don't know enough statistics
to realize that samples which seem intuitively rather small can give "good
enough" results when the margin of error doesn't have to be extremely
tight. Even for tight margins of error, the needed sample sizes for a large
population seem intuitively very small. The sample sizes used are good
enough for the kind of data involved, which isn't precise in its nature.
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Section II: Revenue models
>The ultimate result is that because advertising revenues are not
>supporting the business model, access to information that was once free is
>becoming increasingly limited.
That information has been free for only a few short years. Perhaps making
access a bit more difficult will help public libraries. It's hardly the end
of the world. Placing moving ads on the page with the information makes the
information inaccessible anyway, so if the only choices are free
information with moving ads or no free information, it's six of one and
half a dozen of the other. We'll only get what we think is valuable enough
to pay for. What a concept.
>If this were actually true, then nobody, especially the large news
>organizations, would be selling blinking ads.
Your faith in the ability of the publishers to know what's good for them is
touching, but I find it badly misplaced. Lacking good data, they are simply
accepting money and placing the ads requested. They have no information on
how many users avoid their site because of particular forms of advertising.
(Not even Nielsen claims to know this AFAIK, and it's a much more difficult
problem. It's easy to watch users leave a site, but finding out where they
never go to begin with is much harder.) Heck, these are the same publishers
who originaly put their content on the web for free with no idea how to
make it profitable.
>Without advertising, how will it be possible to give daily global news
>information that is extremely expensive to gather, edit, design, archive,
>research, etc., etc., available for free online? Or to create and maintain
>search engines that are effective? The alternative would be a subscription
>based online newspaper model, or subscription based search engines,
Gosh, horrors. Then I might have to pay for Diabetes Care, Backpacker, The
New Yorker, Adventure Cyclist, CACM, Consumer Reports, Queue, Science,
Clinical Diabetes, IEEE Spectrum, American Scientist ... oh wait a minute,
I'm already paying for all of them. And most of those (9 of 11) get their
revenue primarily from subscriptions and memberships rather than from
advertising. Actually some of these represent models of almost-free content
in print, due to the fact that academic researchers basically donate their
work to scientific journals, and even pay for the privilege.
But I have to say it again: no one here has expressed any desire to
eliminate advertising -- only advertising which interferes with access to
content. Sometimes this is expressed as "annoying" (though Glenn didn't use
that term in his article), but when you probe you find that the real issue
is interference with access to content.
>This is comparing apples to pizza. Neither of the above [Weather
>Underground or MyComicsPage] is exactly taking the market by storm
Almost nobody is taking the market by storm. There are a few 800 pound
gorillas on the web, but past those few, it's all the rest.
My point is not the current balance but the direction of motion. Five years
ago people were saying you could never charge for online content, and I'm
showing that there is motion -- albeit slow -- toward being able to charge
for content. The fact that the LA Times failed last year doesn't mean it
would fail again a couple of years in the future.
A huge issue is that at present, most paid online content requires a rather
hefty subscription. One reason Weather Underground and MyComicsPage can
charge is that the annual fee is small.
But consider another example often discussed here: iTMS! Why is it so
successful? After all, iTMS is charging for online content, even though
it's "keeper" content. One reason for the success is that no commitment is
required (a modern site ;-), with a one-dollar minimum. If I'd had to shell
out $20 for 25 songs, I wouldn't have made an iTMS purchase yet, but in
fact I've spent nearly $25 there.
Suppose the LA Times, instead of requiring annual subscriptions, had been
able to provide an option for daily purchase for, say, ten cents or 25
cents, enough that an annual subscription would be a hefty price break but
still less than buying a print paper. Would people have tried it out? Sure
they would! Whether this would translate into a sufficient revenue stream
remains an open question, but it fits how people approach content in the
print world: buy a single copy at a newsstand, then maybe subscribe, or
maybe just continue buying occasional single copies.
So to my mind, a really critical issue in paying for online content is
developing the ability to pay readily for small chunks.
But again: there IS motion in the direction of willingness to pay for
online content.
>And more and more publications are having to charge for archives,
>including most of the Time Inc. publications, Business Week, etc.
So what? Until recently, the only way to access these archives was to visit
a public library or pay to order back issues. Recent years have been
experimentation. If we end up with online access to archives for a fee,
that's more we had before. We still have libraries; they have suffered but
haven't died. Print periodicals still sell back issues.
>Conde Nast won't give away much editorial from the New Yorker
Take a look at the latest issue online of The New Yorker,
http://newyorker.com. They're giving away about 2/3 of the current content
(but no archives, and the only ads are their own). I only wish they had the
September 12 cover online -- it's the saddest one I've ever seen.
>It [the new NYT plan] will not be for all online archives
What they are saying on the web site is "We ... will be offering our
TimesSelect service this fall which will include access to our Archive. We
will be finalizing the details of TimesSelect in the coming weeks". That
seems to say all archives (presumably back to 1996, beyond which it's a
different game), but obviously this is not a firm commitment, so we'll just
have to wait for the details.
>They are doing this [selling subscriptions] because they can command much,
>much higher prices by delivering very targeted ads.
Then doesn't this indicate where the money is? In delivering ads that
people actually want, rather than trying to force them using motion to look
at ads while they are trying to digest the site's content? It goes back to
the fact that productive advertising is a cooperative endeavor between the
advertiser, the consumer, and the publisher, and if the advertiser doesn't
respect the consumer then the ads will be far less effective.
>Because so much information, entertainment and services are available for
>free, people do not want to pay for content.
True, people have never liked to pay. But people do like convenience.
That's why public libraries never killed bookstores.
There are other examples. Software is one. It's possible to run a computer
very well with free (as in beer) software, but most people find that many
commercial software packages (not all) provide features, convenience, or
reliability that's worth the price.
If/as the best content moves to small charges, people will get used to
paying. Again, if we can establish the ability to purchase online content
in small chunks, that will greatly accelerate acceptance.
>You are very unusual in your willingness to pay for online content.
But again, the general public reluctance is due to seeing free
alternatives. If the free alternatives drive out the paid, then it's
because the public (with its finely honed critical skills and appreciation
of fine work ... hmm) has judged the free a preferable alternative.
People have been willing to pay for content for decades (and to a much
lesser extent, for centuries). Most popular print publications have always
been supported by a combination of subscription and advertising revenue.
Various aspects of the web have distorted this willingness to pay in
various ways.
But consider yet another example: NetZero. OK, it's not content. But
NetZero offered free Internet access in return for on-screen advertising.
It flopped -- not in favor of free unhampered access, but in favor of paid
access. People found it preferable to pay. Yes, NetZero still offers this
deal, but only for ten hours/month, which is probably more of a loss leader
than a profit center. They have morphed into just a niche ISP with a catchy
name. They went from ad-supported to user-paid because that's what people
preferred. People can prefer to pay when they judge all the factors.
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Section III: Fairness
>When people use this information but block the ads, they are denying
>revenue the companies need to survive. [...] When you look at an online
>newspaper or magazine and block the ads, you are denying that company
>revenue that funds the content it produces and delivers. And because most
>newspapers and magazines [lose] money on their online content, you're
>denying them an important avenue that could lead to profitability.
I'm not blocking anyone else from seeing the ads. I'm not blocking the
company from assigning an ad to the page they serve me.
(In fact, depending on how they count, I suspect that ads are often counted
as displayed once the page linking to them is sent to the user, whether the
user's browser actually downloads the ad. Possibly you can answer whether
this is correct.)
I don't owe the company revenue or survival. I'm paying them exactly what
they asked me to -- same as I do with print publications, both the
partially ad-supported and the wholly subscription-supported. They asked me
to consider reading the ads they offered; I considered, and I read some ads
and declined to read certain ads.
Finally, I repeat: I'm not aware of any situation in which fairness demands
that I actually pay attention to any particular ad. I'm not morally
obligated to read every billboard on the highway. I'm not obligated to read
even one ad in any newspaper or magazine that I subscribe to. I'm not
obligated to read the TidBITS sponsor ads in the newsletter. I'm not
obligated to read every ad in the online versions of the Times or the
Times-Picayune, the Post or the Post-Intelligencer. I do read some of the
ads, as some have value for me, and some are amusing. But I can't see where
the method by which I choose to skip particular ads is (morally) of any
concern as long as that method affects only me.
>The consumer can leave if they don't want to view the ads, or they can not
>refer to a publication they find offensive. If it is that offensive, there
>will not be enough of an audience to sell ads to. But in the case of the
>publications we've been discussing, there are big, viable and growing
>audiences that are very interested in the content.
And those audiences are trying hard to reach the content by blocking
certain kinds of ads which interfere with reaching the content. Not all of
them are fighting the interference, but a lot of that is because the
majority don't yet know it's possible to fight it. You point to the growing
audience, but as I've pointed out repeatedly, we have no idea how much
faster that audience might be growing, or how much larger it might be now,
without some of the inhibiting factors currently present (of which moving
ads are only one factor).
>While it's easy to block ads, the question is whether it is ethical to do
>so, esp. when receiving content for free. Magazines and newspapers are
>having a very difficult time online.
I didn't ask for the content to be free. That's just how it came. Perhaps
it's useful to review how this situation came to be:
On the first day, Vint created the Internet and Steve created AOL, and
darkness was on the face of the wall between them.
On the second day, the universities found the Internet and a small slice of
the public found AOL, but the darkness between them remained.
On the third day, the wall between AOL and the Internet was breached, and
brother and sister could once again speak to each other.
On the fourth day, Tim invented the World Wide Web, and the universities
started making content available via the WWW while everybody else ignored it.
On the fifth day, AOL and the advertisers saw that the WWW was a Profitable
Thing, and the public gained other means of access to the Internet, and
light was on the face of the net.
On the sixth day, the commercial interests saw that the WWW might be the
Next Big Thing but didn't know what to do with it, and entered into
contracts with whatever angel or devil they could find to help them partake.
On the seventh day, nobody rested, the users because of information
overload and the commercial interests because they still hadn't figured out
the New Demon they had made a contract with (most of the presumed angels
having turned out to be in camouflage).
So that's where it stands. Magazines and newspapers are having a hard time
online because they went online not knowing (since no one knew) how to deal
with publishing online. They offered their content free because it was the
only thing they could figure out how to do online which would draw visitors
(and at the time they were probably right). But it WAS their choice to get
online and offer free content.
>Most card stock is for subscription solicitation - in-house advertising.
A lot of it yes, but far from "most". If you'd like, I can save a month of
mine for you to analyze.
>And if you're ripping it, you're looking at it anyway.
You obviously don't know me. ;-) Oh, of course I looked at it once, but
then I knew what was in it, and I stopped looking. Perhaps I get a glimpse,
but it's maybe 5% or less of the exposure that I get to ads printed on the
same pages with the editorial content of articles I read. I also rip out
thick multipage advertising supplements from magazines after looking only
at the first page, and dump the advertising inserts in newspapers usually
without examining the stack at all.
I see no moral difference between avoiding an ad 95% and avoiding it 100%.
If you see a problem with my blocking certain kinds of online ads at a 100%
rate, then I have to conclude that you'd see a problem with my blocking
certain kinds of print ads at a 95% rate. And if you see no problem with my
blocking certain kinds of print ads at 95%, then I don't see how you can
object to my blocking certain kinds of online ads at 100%.
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I seem to notice a significant circular motion in this discussion, a
slippage toward content-free in place of free content, so I'm probably
going to let it lie no matter what response I get.
[Yes, I think it's time to wind this down, please. -Adam]
Edward
Art Works by Melynda Reid:
http://paleo.org
nyc.rr.com (Marilyn Matty) wrote:
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