News. People Think It's Their Right To Get It For Free

Web advertising will not grow because nobody clicks on banner ads.

When was the last time you clicked on an advertisement on this site? I never have. And I'm on this damn thing every day.

 

That's the big problem with web advertising: people don't trust it, even if it's a legitimate enterprise. Too many adware/spyware/malware/viruses spread through disreputable links that it makes people wary -- the pop-up blockers didn't gain popularity because people didn't want to see Best Buy or Amazon ads, they were there to keep the "1,001 LOLS A DAY" and "TAKE OUR SURVEY AND WIN A PLAYSTATION 2" ads.

That's probably a part of what made door-to-door selling go the way of the do-do.

 

SHWEWWW. When I saw the thread title I thought it was going to be another thead on Healthcare.

 

Pretty sure door-to-door selling went away because women entered the workforce and were no longer home during the day to answer the door.

 

It's not about banner ads anymore. How many newspapers charge per click? It's all about impressions.

 

Too true, which is why a key metric for advertisers and publishers is whether readers even remember SEEING a particular ad in the past 30 days.

 

Advertisements on this site? No idea what you're talking about.

 

That might be part of it, but I'd be willing to wager at least as big a part was that door-to-door salespeople got a bad rap between overaggressive missionaries, overaggressive security system salespeople and general-purpose shysters. The bad drives out the good, and now if someone random comes up to your door, your first inclination probably isn't to buy what they're selling (do Girl Scouts even go door-to-door anymore?)

 

Yes.

Ah, thin mints ... nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom

 

I've never understood why newspapers didn't figure out what their newsstand price was, PDF their entire issue of said paper and charge that newsstand price for access to the PDF of that paper.

You could bill the internet as a free extra to those folks who pay to advertise in your paper and you'd likely sell more copies.

 

It's not the consumer's right to get it for free, but it's not our right to get paid for it, either. We're making nothing off the product because the free market won't pay us anything for it. Saying that we deserve to get paid for our hard work isn't going to make the money start flowing. Deserve's got nothing to do with it.

 

Not too many people give a crap about the PDF edition of the paper. It should be free then, or tenth of the price, since you're not paying pressman, for paper, or distribution.