martes, 27 de marzo de 2012

Advertising... Why?!



Hi all!

  Today I'm gonna talk about advertising... yes, that annoying stuff that appears suddenly while you are visiting websites or while you are playing with your favourite smartphone game. Before I became a developer, I thought that advertising is one of the worst things that people created for the Internet. By becoming a developer, I changed my mind. Well... not much.

  We all agree that advertising is annoying, but we need to understand both, users and developers points of view, and then decide if advertising is as useless as we all think.

Users point of view:
  Yes, I know that I'm not 'all of the users', but I do know what most of people think about it. A lot of users think that adverts = virus. I've heard a lot of times: -"Be careful to not to click that advert! It can be harmful for your computer!". I understand that point of view because lots of adverts are links to virus... but not all!

  Moreover, adverts are disturbing: they force you to wait to get access to another website, they appear suddenly and sometimes it's difficult to close them because the close button is hidden, they open themselves in another window of the browser... Summarizing: f*** them!

  These are the most important and good reasons why people hate adverts. But, what do developers think about it? Do they want to disturb people with those annoying types of adverts? Why do they want adverts on their websites or apps? Let's take a look at their point of view...

Developers point of view:
  When you become a developer and you create a product that people is used to use, you are very happy but... what if you want (or need) to earn some little amount of money? (believe me, so little amount of money) If you work in a company, you get money monthly, but if you are a developer that works only for fun, or works to bring new services or games to people, you won't earn nothing... In this situation is where adverts come into play.

  The most used adverts are called 'banners' (see the image at the top). They can be small, big, only text, text with images, dynamic etc... There are lots of other types of adverts, but I'll write about banners because they are the most used. And how do they work?

  Most of the adverts only give a little amount of money to the developer when people click on them. This type of adverts are used in a very very high percentage of free smartphone applications and games (Blackberry, iOs, Android, Windows Phone, Bada etc...). The other type of adverts are the most annoying of them. They give money to the developer only when the advert is shown. They are used a lot on the Internet (the typical advert that appears suddenly in full screen mode and forces you to wait X seconds to get access to the page)

  Developers usually use adverts to earn some money to the maintenance of the website or server, to contract other employers etc... But why adverts?

  On the Internet there are only two ways to earn money: forcing the user to pay for a product or giving for free that product but adding adverts. If you create a new app or website from zero, you want to get as users as possible to promote the product. That's why there are lots and lots of free apps. The problem is that giving the product for free, you don't earn anything, so the most used option in this cases in to add adverts.

So, what's the problem between the two points of view?
  Developers want/need money and use adverts to reach their goal but users don't click them because they think adverts will be harmful for their computers or smartphones. And what do we 'win' with this bad combination? Developers use more aggressive adverts and people get angry because of those annoying, aggressive and tiring adverts.

  To finish, I'll let you know my personal point of view: If you enjoy a website or a game or app for smartphone, help the developer by clicking the adverts. This way, the developer can pay his expenses and give support to the application, and the user will only waste 10 seconds of his time and he will be able to continue enjoying the application or website.

  I've written this post because a lot of people think that adverts are something created only to disturb, and that's not the truth.

  Thank you all for reading what I think about this topic. If you have any question, you can leave a comment just below.

P.S: Sorry for my bad English but I'm a Spanish student and I don't still have a good written English (neither spoken).

3 comentarios:

  1. Publica la entrada en español tambien asi todos somos felices. =) Por lo de los anuncios esta bien lo que piensas y tienes toda la razón. La unica forma de mantener estos proyectos es con publicidad o donaciones y la preferencia de los usuarios es la primera. =/

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  2. Muchas gracias kquijada! A partir de ahora publicaré también en español. Y si, ese es el único modo de ayudar a los desarrolladores, ya que nos ofrecen algo gratis y añaden publicidad no invasiva. Bueno también está el de donar pero este tema trataba los anuncios.

    Un saludo!

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  3. As you said, most of small developers NEED to earn money to keep their products (apps, websites, games, etc.) "alive".
    I totally agree with both points of view, the user's one and the developer's point of view.
    Adds are really anoying, but without them, a lot of the apps/websites we love won't even exist.
    So, i say Y E S to advertising.


    Ps: And don't forget about donation!
    I think you'll have to write another post about it.

    C ya.
    Btw, sorry for my bad english. ^^

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