I wonder a lot about news websites being chock full of sludge ads. Because I think we assume the process went like this:
- Print/TV news org is doing fine financially in the 90s
- In the late 2000s, print begins to decline and consumers demand online access, which they won't pay for
- News org adds awful ads everywhere to get by
- They begin making their material worse and worse as they learn what kind of pandering gets people to click; It's no longer an option to make good news, because content is less important than being eye catching
But I have always wondered if the reality is far more banal and less human:
- Print/TV news org is doing fine financially in the 90s
- People in charge learn about web ads; decide to make a website solely so they can get extra free money for content they were already making
- This succeeds, so they immediately begin trying to find ways to create bait (content) for less, since the actual product is now the viewers, not the news
This is part of my overarching theory that if something is free, it will be popular simply because there is no opportunity cost, and this is what drives an awful lot of terrible decisions at businesses - they will do anything if it's free, and it doesn't matter if it's a good idea; but if that thing costs any non-negligible amount they won't even consider it.
My favorite example is mail merges - your bank would not send you a physical piece of mail every single week telling you about some minor account feature, It would be absurd, but they'll do it via email because it's quote unquote free.
And if someone had to hand-print every single advertisement, they wouldn't send you credit card offers at all. It's not that they would budget less for those things, or do them at longer intervals, they just wouldn't do them at all if there was any associated cost whatever.
The invention of the mail merge and of mass printing and mass mailing created the business "need" to do these things. They're not intrinsic, obvious practices, and I imagine for every 50,000 emails, they get maybe one curious sniff, and fewer bites. But it's "free", so why not irritate their entire customer base despite the strategy being incredibly ineffective?
This shit was invented opportunistically, and that's why every time a new technology appears, my first thought is "what obnoxious idea will this put in the brains of businessmen that they never would have had otherwise?"
This is why every website or online service will collect every piece of information about you that it can, and retain it forever. Data collection is "slap this .js file on your template," and storage is a cheap commodity.
Also why every device with an internet connection is now both an advertising platform and a surveillance mechanism. Your car, your fridge, your lightbulbs - all of them sell your personal habits to the highest bidder. (Actually to every bidder.)
