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I have nothing against a company trying to make
an honest dollar in exchange for a useful service.
After all, that is why companies are in existence.
Those internet companies which provided free services
and based their existence on supporting those services
with advertising are having a tough time right now.
The advertising model is based upon network television's
success at providing free programming in exchange
for the viewing of advertisements.
The most significant issue with this model (on both
television and the internet) is the fact that the
customer is not the viewer or user. The customer is
the advertiser. The actual user of the service is
the commodity which is being sold. That's why the
Neilson ratings are so important to the network stations
- they determine how many viewers are watching so
that commercial time can be sold. The higher the rating,
the more likely sales are to occur and the higher
the rates can be.
The model gets even more convoluted with services
such as GeoCities and Egroups. You see, the model
normally has three components: the company selling
the advertising (such as Yahoo), the advertisers (the
real customers), and the users (the viewers of the
ads). Egroups and GeoCities adds a forth grouping.
This is the content providers. In network television,
content is purchased directly by the networks and
carefully planned to be of maximum desirability to
advertisers. In the case of Yahoo and similar companies,
the content is created by a legion of volunteers,
all more or less industriously working to make money
for the corporate machine.
Who are these content providers? Why, anyone who
has a web site (in the case of GeoCities) and runs
a mailing list (in the case of egroups). As you create
web pages or send emails you are actually giving content
to the company, in which they place advertisements.
People look at your content and view the ads.
Unfortunately, in this model the content providers
are not worth much to the company. After all, there
are plenty more where they came from. Someone will
always want a free web site or mailing list or whatever
in exchange for the showing of ads.
That is the main reason why the service from companies
with this model tends to be exceptionally poor - the
content providers are the lowest critters on the food
chain.
This is very easy to see. Let's say someone puts
up a web site on one of these free providers which
has some questionable content, perhaps not exactly
in violation of the terms and conditions but it could
be interpreted that way. You will find that the web
site will be deleted immediately and without warning
on the first email complaining of a violation. There
is usually no investigation, no appeal and no recourse
for the webmaster.
In a more sane model, the webmaster directly pays
for his site. If a complaint is made, the company
will generally be much slower on the trigger, and
much more likely to listen to the webmasters than
in the advertising based model.
As advertisers have become more savvy to the fact
that promotion on the internet is not nearly as cut-and-dry
or simple as expected, they are spending their money
more carefully. This has resulted in far less income
for the internet companies (resulting in many business
failures), and it can be quite entertaining to see
how desperate the survivors are becoming.
Egroups moved their ads from the bottom of their
emails to the top, and changed them from text links
to graphics banners. Users of the service hate this
change almost without exception, but advertisers want
their banners seen, and the top is better suited for
that purpose. It's completely irrelevant what the
users think (unless, of course, they defected in mass,
which they have not done).
In addition, egroups subscribers were recently shocked
to learn that they will now, by default, receive numerous
spam emails in exchange for using the service. There
is now a new screen which lists all of the different
categories for this spam along with a yes/no option
to allow it to be stopped. The default for everyone
is YES, because Yahoo knows that most people will
not bother to change it.
This naturally puts more advertisements in front
of more people.
On the other hand, Yahoo has obviously concluded
that the advertising model does not work well for
it's GeoCities product. If you have a web site you
are only allowed a tiny amount of bandwidth before
the site is shut off for the rest of the month. This
means far fewer ads are shown. The purpose is to get
the webmasters to pay for their web sites (which would
be a poor decision on the part of most webmasters
as their are many web hosts with far better service
available at less cost).
So what is the answer for the consumer? Find services
in which you are the direct customer. You will generally
receive far better customer service, and you might
be surprised to find out that the cost is not as bad
as you might have thought.
About the Author:
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips
And Secrets
at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website
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