How Ads Keep Stuff Free

Sources

How Ads Keep Almost Totally Free

One of the reasons we get to enjoy so many free platforms and other sorts of social media is thanks to Advertisements, many free things online rely on ads, ad revenue to be exact, allowing them to support their services and stay online and free. This allows us users to access things without paying anything, other than just seeing these ads.

How People Like Watching

An article called “Consumers favor ad supported streaming” by Rande Price talks about how people prefer to watch TV with ads, knowing that they'll have to sit through and wait. Rather than paying for a subscription based service and not watch ads, Two thirds of viewers prefer watching ads.

Which Ones Are Free Due to Ads?

Thanks to ads most platforms and apps we use are kept free due to them. Some like Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok these are some of the big examples I could think of. They allow you to look through media with ads sprinkled in between certain things, like the next video, or the next scroll. Thanks to ads, these apps and websites don’t charge us for using it. Youtube being the expectation here, as you can pay for premium and have an ad free experience.

What's the cost!? Of being free!....

Even though they keep stuff free, like I've stated before, we are bombarded with advertisements. Like do I really need to watch three ads for my video? Do I really need to see an ad while I'm doom scrolling? Do I need to hear like 3 or 4 ads while listening to music on spotify? And then they advertise their “ad-free” subscription which most who hate ads would most likely just pay for it, and like I mentioned already they give you ads based on your recent activities, so if your app is free they could be using you for personal data.