PublicBrain

There’s also a problem with a disconnect between ads and users. My belief is that you can build a better business if the people that use your product are the same people who pay for your product. In the ad supported model, the people who pay for your product are not people who use it. People paid for the advertisers, and the people who use it are the users, so there’s a disconnect. So, who are you building it for? Who do you really have to make happy.

In many cases, it ends up being the advertisers which is why you see in a lot of news sites especially, there are ads everywhere. And that’s a pretty crappy experience, I think. So, I’m not a big fan of that model. I think that some people could make it work, but I’m not a big fan of it and I think the default idea of, we’ll just put ads on it. That’s what will support it, we’ll just put ads on it is a terrible idea. And it’s much, much, much easier to get people to pay for your product or your content, or whatever than it is to throw ads up.

And the last thing I will say about this is putting a price on something forces you to make it good, and that is like, those are the constraints you need on you; a force that forces you to make something good. Because if something is free and ad supported, it doesn’t have to be that good, it’s free. I’ll use it, it’s free. I don’t care. But the moment I start paying you for it, that’s the moment it forces you to be good and give me a service that’s worth paying for and that to me is the right pressure to have on a company.