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Unlike with web advertising, you're still downloading the ad in this case, there's no way for the creator or the advertiser to tell that you blocked it after.

I've never bought anything from an ad, never intentionally clicked one or visited a link from a podcast ad. There's truly no difference for me. Their revenue stream will remain intact, the kind of people who do that will keep doing that.



The revenue stream won't remain intact. This lowers the effectiveness of ads in the long run, reducing the price of ads and reducing the revenue for content producers.

There's no way to spin this around: this reduces revenue for the creator of the free content you're consuming (and for all other creators).

Everyone loses, except for the app maker, that makes money (if they are selling the app) by sucking it out of the content creators.


I don't think so, the people who would use this are likely to be the same people who click the skip 30s button now and wouldn't buy things from ads anyways. The only reason this doesn't work out in browser based ones is because we block at the HTTP level and they pay per impression not per spot/per download like podcast advertising.

But if you do happen to be right and the model falls apart, that's even better. I'll gladly chip a bit of money to creators who are worth it, but right now there's no easy and affordable way to do that. I actively want to see advertising based business models fail so we can see those systems evolve. I hate ads.


I'm going to spin it around: It reduces revenue from ads, thereby reducing advertising. Now the question is, how much content do you think is both something you truly want to listen to and something few people are willing to directly support financially. Personally, I'm starting to think that maybe all the crud advertising enables is just another downside to ads, not the benefit in the cost-benefit analysis.


So you'd kill advertising and content for everyone else just because you're personally willing to fork up money?


I don't know about the OP, but I would.

The advertising industry has repeatedly shown itself to be sleazy and underhanded and willing to throw everybody under the bus to make money for themselves. Spam, malware, pop-up ads, tracking cookies, extra loud volume commercials, etc. They can't go out of business fast enough, IMO.

You probably wouldn't defend a pay-day loan business, so why defend advertisers?


I don't have that power, and even if I did, I wouldn't ban advertising. That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I'm saying I'm growing skeptical that the content advertising finances is actually valuable to the consumer, and am starting to think it may actually be harmful.

A lot of media is designed to be addictive, hooking the consumer in order to create a captive audience for ad delivery. I'm no longer sure the ads themselves, or even the tracking they often entail, are the worst thing about the whole system. That's why I'm not too bothered about giving people the tools to not see or hear ads if they so choose.


> that the content advertising finances is actually valuable to the consumer

They are not, advertisement never creates value for the society, it's a 0-sum game. They never add value they only shift the stream of money from a producer which makes a good product which would sell without ads to a producer which has money to invest in ads to trick people to buy the worse product.


> advertisement never creates value for the society, it's a 0-sum game

You're plainly, absolutely, completely, wrong. But, as you made the claim, I'll wait for your burden of proof.

> They never add value they only shift the stream of money from a producer which makes a good product which would sell without ads to a producer which has money to invest in ads to trick people to buy the worse product.

You just stated a very narrow case, as if it represented the whole.

Your argument is essentially "if you're selling well without ads, then ads will not add value", which is self-evident, but irrelevant.


How am I wrong that ads are a 0-sum game for the society? Perhaps I'm ignorant, but I really don't see where the value is for society. I understand that it's not for the advertiser, but for society?


Advertising enables product discovery, price discovery, and so on. That should be enough to answer your question.

Putting up a sign in front of your shop saying "New Mousetrap - Improved Design" is advertising.

If you make a better mousetrap and nobody knows about it, your mousetrap is irrelevant.

Sure, not all advertising generates benefits to society, just as not all products do.


There is a difference though, if I want to know something then I search for information, I go from one shop to another and do research to discover the best product. Which is kind of a pull mechanism.

What advertising does is a push mechanism, where they try to flood my brain with nonsense so that I get confused and don't buy the best product for me, but instead buy something the advertiser sells.

Product and price discovery can be done by me doing research, so saying that it's advertising enabling that is just dishonest.


Sure, and putting up a sign in front of your store is advertising.

Advertising is communication, you might not like it, but it is communication. It is product and price discovery.


>The revenue stream won't remain intact. This lowers the effectiveness of ads in the long run, reducing the price of ads

This is a good thing.

>and reducing the revenue for content producers.

They'll just have to be creative in finding ways to monetize.


>The revenue stream won't remain intact. This lowers the effectiveness of ads in the long run, reducing the price of ads and reducing the revenue for content producers.

That would only be true if everybody hearing the ad responded to it. Obviously that doesn't happen, and there's an implicit assumption in advertising models that only some percentage of the listeners/viewers will respond to the ads. People blocking the ads are unlikely to respond anyway, so whether they block the ads or not doesn't make much difference in the long run.


>I've never bought anything from an ad

Do you mean any ad ever, or just a podcast ad? If it's the former that is a pretty bold claim.


Really? At least for ads which track the click I am almost certain that I can say that I never have. I've been using AdBlock since the very early stages when it was available and even before I actively avoided clicking on ads. It might be that before AdBlock I would have seen ads about something so that my subconscious mind attributed the constant reminder about that product with some kind of quality (like TV ads). Then, once I had to buy a product which did what this one did I would more probably buy the one which I felt I knew already. But that is a negative thing about ads, not a positive.




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