[HN Gopher] Advertisements have emerged on Substack's 'ad-free' ...
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Advertisements have emerged on Substack's 'ad-free' newsletter
platform
Author : krm01
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-01-21 16:45 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| ivanbakel wrote:
| Ignoring, for the moment, the questionable morals of pervading an
| ad-free space with adverts for your own profits: the article
| could dwell more on the extent to which these companies are
| burning Substack down for fuel.
|
| It's very mild to say that adverts "risk Substack's funding
| model". I'd be more dramatic - advertising like this risks
| Substack's brand reputation, and the subscription incomes of
| every non-advertising publisher on it; in other words, the
| existence of the business itself. If I'm paying to get ad-free
| content, and ads slip in anyways - I'm liable to blame Substack.
| ssivark wrote:
| Fair point, but what can Substack actually do about this? Maybe
| they can forbid insertions from ad networks technically and in
| their TOS, but at the other extreme end, there's almost nothing
| they can do about submarine articles. What if someone set up a
| Wirecutter analogue (but being paid for reviews) on Substack?
|
| At the end of the day, it is fundamentally a platform for
| sharing opinions.
| criddell wrote:
| Does Substack claim to be an ad-free space?
|
| Edit: In their FAQ they say:
|
| > Substack is entirely focused on subscriptions, so we don't
| build any additional functionality to support affiliate links
| or advertising, but you are free to use them.
| burkaman wrote:
| Also in the FAQ:
|
| > How does Substack make money?
|
| > Substack takes a 10% fee on all paid subscriptions.
| Substack will never run ads or sell user data.
| soneca wrote:
| I don't think people will blame Substack. As I perceive
| Substack model and positioning , I would guess that people
| would blame the author.
|
| Also, newspapers have a mix of subscription and ads for
| decades, I don't think it's that shocking that some Substack
| authors are doing that as well.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| >As I perceive Substack model and positioning , I would guess
| that people would blame the author.
|
| That depends on the extent to which users see Substack as a
| publisher vs a marketplace. If you think Substack's role is
| just infrastructural, you would blame the author. But if you
| think Substack has to provide value by cultivating good,
| high-quality newsletters, then you blame Substack.
|
| But in either case, if you're looking for an ad-free
| experience, an increase in ads will frustrate you. Even if
| you don't think Substack is responsible for ads, you may be
| using it specifically to find ad-free content creators. The
| moment that guarantee vanishes from the Substack marketplace,
| the service becomes less valuable to you.
|
| >Also, newspapers have a mix of subscription and ads for
| decades,
|
| Substack's business model is predicated on its dissimilarity
| to existing publishing forms. By choosing their own
| subscriptions and receiving them in their inbox, a Substack
| customer is doing the complete opposite to going out and
| buying a particular broadsheet printed by someone else. I
| doubt any Substack customer who is paying for an ad-free
| experience would appreciate the comparison to a newspaper.
| paxys wrote:
| This is a very real problem. I have been a YouTube Premium
| subscriber for years, but am now considering cancelling because
| every popular channel has started embedding their own ads in
| videos. It's the smaller creators who end up suffering for it.
| jelling wrote:
| The risk I see for Substack is that if a writer has enough ad
| revenue in parallel to their Substack subscriptions they are more
| likely to jump ship, or at least, threaten to reduce the 10%
| commission.
|
| I haven't used Substack's creator software so not certain if they
| offer more value than a payment process (or even a vertical-bank
| designed for creators) would. But neither of those would charge
| 10%.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| This will probably go about as well as Feedburner's RSS ads.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I really never saw a convincing argument for why substack would
| go any other way than platforms before them. They're all liable
| to the same market pressures. Easy as that. If the paperwork of a
| company doesn't specifically rule out certain changes to occur
| upon incorporation, don't rely on those changes not occurring.
| jiofih wrote:
| Can't read the article as it is behind a paywall :|
| LordAtlas wrote:
| Is running ads on your Substack newsletter fine as per Substack's
| ToS though?
| criddell wrote:
| Yes.
| icefrakker wrote:
| I wish newspapers would offer a no ads subscription.
| rchaud wrote:
| You will never escape ads. HN is always about "Let me pay to not
| see ads". But it doesn't work that way. The value of ads is
| quantified in aggregate, not on a per-customer basis.
|
| This isn't a theoretical economics experiment that can be carried
| out on a spreadsheet, where you can neatly decouple ad revenue
| from the calculation of customer lifetime value and spit out a
| nice round price point for an ad-free experience. This price
| would need to be revised quarterly at least as to account for ad
| revenue seasonality and changing subscriber numbers.
|
| > As an isolated event, advertising on Substack is no big deal.
| But if it becomes ubiquitous, the funding model of the platform
| could be at risk, forcing Substack to either clamp down on this
| cottage industry or embrace it. Substack could incorporate
| advertising into its product, but doing so would contradict the
| platform's commitment to remaining ad-free.
|
| So, the ads will be tolerated for as long as Substack does not
| have a native ad platform through which all ads must flow
| through.
| criddell wrote:
| > But it doesn't work that way.
|
| Since there are services that have ad-free tiers I think it can
| work that way.
|
| Hulu*, for example has an ad-free tier and they don't change
| the price quarterly.
|
| * Yes, I know there are something like 3 shows that still have
| ads, but it doesn't change my argument.
| [deleted]
| burkaman wrote:
| It doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to decline a
| money-making opportunity. Can you think of any businesses near
| you that have blank outdoor wall space, even though they could
| make good money putting a billboard on it?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| In the State of Hawaii the Outdoor Circle successfully made
| billboards illegal. Businesses can still have signs on their
| storefronts but that's about it. Many mural artists have
| filled the void and you can see some in the news story below:
|
| https://www.civilbeat.org/2017/08/lets-preserve-and-
| perpetua...
| burkaman wrote:
| That's one way to deal with it, and in my analogy that
| would be equivalent to Substack banning ads within
| newsletters. But my point is that even where billboards are
| legal, most property owners choose not to install one. Why?
| It's because people are not money robots, and factor many
| other things into their decisions such as ethics, morals,
| personal preferences, cultural norms, etc. So, "ads make
| economic sense and are therefore inevitable" is a bad
| argument.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I misunderstood your post, my apologies. I just wanted to
| present Hawaii's lack of billboards as an aside. It's
| quite nice.
| rchaud wrote:
| Physical ad spaces are not comparable to digital. A billboard
| can only show one ad at a time with no real targeting. A
| digital ad can use your browsing history to guess your
| preferences and show different ads to different users.
|
| Digital ads are also right there in front of you, and you can
| go from ad impression --> sale right there on the screen. If
| your billboard is on the side of your building, located in
| some remote office park, well, the reach isn't as good.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Sounds like you just compared them.
|
| Also sounds like the differences are in degree, not in
| kind.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Interestingly, you make this comment on a platform entirely
| devoid of advertisement, because it itself is one massive
| advertisement for the YC accelerator program.
|
| So it's very true, you cannot escape the advertisements.
| bob29 wrote:
| Aren't those weird submissions with no comments that show up
| on here ads? Actually, the last one I saw was for "Substack
| is hiring talented engineers to redefine the way people read
| and write things on the internet"
| TameAntelope wrote:
| True, but I don't think those companies pay for those
| posts. It's all part of the "YC Accelerator Advertising"
| write-off that funds this site.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Lol those companies literally gave up a part of
| themselves for (among others) those ads. Not saying it's
| not a good deal, but it's not a free lunch either.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm sorry if I insinuated otherwise, I totally agree.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Nothing weird about those, they've always been on HN.
| They're also the one of the least obtrusive ads around. In
| return we get a moderated, fast website for free.
| gberger wrote:
| Yes, they allow job ads for YCombinator companies.
| MikeLumos wrote:
| I'm happily paying for youtube premium because it allows me to
| watch youtube on my iPad without ads, and to download the
| videos to watch offline. Totally worth it.
|
| I don't know how many youtube users are paying for it, but
| youtube premium is still a thing, and I hope it continues to
| be. Seems like they're making it work somehow.
| [deleted]
| titzer wrote:
| uBlock origin works great against YouTube ads. Unfortunately
| it is broken on Safari atm.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I pay for this too and justify it as actually an
| education/learning SaaS subscription. Youtube has become the
| way I learn everything. I don't want ads interrupting that
| learning experience.
| jsnell wrote:
| They had 30M paying users at end of Q3 (up from 20M 9 months
| earlier). That includes both Premium and Music subscribers,
| but given the pricing structure it is hard to imagine who
| would pay for just Music. In terms of all users, 1.5 years
| ago they said 2B monthly active users.
|
| On one hand, that sounds miserable. Only 1% of the users are
| paying! On the other hand, a Premium subscriber is an order
| of magnitude more profitable. The ads run rate seems to be
| about $20B/year, and subscriptions behind at just a factor of
| 5 at about $4B/year.
|
| (The $20B is a hard number from the Q3 earnings, $4B is back
| of the envelope. It's hard to say just how e.g. regional
| pricing if affecting it, or how the family plans are
| counted.)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Technically you could also say "you will never escape crime"
| because crime always pays more than doing things legitimately
| (why earn your money when you can just steal it?), and yet as a
| society we've managed to marginalize crime and reduce instances
| of it to single-digit percentages in most developed countries.
|
| Why should it be any different for ads? Advertising is a cancer
| on society, by itself its purpose is to waste some person's
| time by showing them something they haven't asked for,
| sometimes in hope to drive a purchase. We've basically
| normalized intentionally wasting people's time (in aggregate
| this time can be expressed in human lifetimes) for the benefit
| of a select few (the advertisers). Advertising also has
| secondary negative effects where it perverts the incentives
| between service providers and their users (social networks'
| objective is to make you look at ads, _not_ facilitate
| communication with your friends /family), sometimes up to the
| point where said service providers promote harmful content to
| drive ad views ("engagement" as they call it) where said
| content then leads to mental health issues, broken
| relationships and crime (like the radicalization of the right-
| leaning Trump supporters that ended up storming the Capitol).
| intricatedetail wrote:
| It's a shame that this isn't more widespread view. I can also
| add that ads together with granular targeting are being used
| into manipulating people into buying things they wouldn't
| normally want or need, and that's sort of more sophisticated
| and legal scam.
| acrefoot wrote:
| I thought street crime was a pretty terrible business for
| most? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UGC2nLnaes
|
| Also, bank robbery isn't usually very lucrative, and they've
| made it harder and less lucrative over time. "According to
| the FBI a bank robbery averaged a take of $4,000 in 2009,
| which may not have been sufficient to yield the thieves a
| positive return on their enterprise. You see, at today's
| prices, the robbers would need to expend $4,442 for the guns,
| bullets, and masks used in a typical bank robbery."
| http://bastiat.mises.org/2014/09/the-basic-economics-of-
| bank...
|
| Some crime has been made pretty unprofitable.
| cma wrote:
| > "Let me pay to not see ads". But it doesn't work that way.
| The value of ads is quantified in aggregate, not on a per-
| customer basis.
|
| The bigger issue is the people that would pay to remove ads
| have more expensive habits and are worth much more in ads than
| the average user (though maybe that is somewhat counteracted by
| being more savvy against scams delivered through ads).
| eugeniub wrote:
| Ironically I can't view this article without disabling my iOS
| adblocker.
| randompwd wrote:
| There's nothing ironic about that.
|
| The site hosting the article isn't substack nor is the article
| a condemnation of advertising.
| vlod wrote:
| https://archive.is/yUWvC
| sprayk wrote:
| How do I get past the captcha on these links? The POST after I
| pass the captcha just 500s and I end up back at the same page
| but with a new captcha. Turned off adblock and made sure
| cookies weren't blocked.
| behindsight wrote:
| Out of curiosity, are you using Cloudflare DNS? It seems to
| be a conscious decision on the part of archive.is
|
| A previous discussion can be found here[0] with the statement
| by archive.is here[1]
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
|
| 1: https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680
| vlod wrote:
| Hmm.. I don't get a captcha for archive.is. (Just tried on FF
| and Chrome)
|
| Do you have any wonky extensions?
| MaggieL wrote:
| Paywall.
| vlod wrote:
| see my comment above for: archive.is link
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