Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Anthony Behrens Esq,
Kill it off Kim or whoever…web advertising, as it stands, needs to be put out of its misery so that we are forced to find something that actually works…for readers and publishers..
Heh. While I don't particularly disagree with you about the state of internet advertising, I'm not sure that killing the whole thing dead with a more toxic version is quite where I'd go ...
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Aye. I don’t think I’ve ever clicked through on an internet advert, and I fast forward through TV adverts very happily. But I recognise that they’re part of how the system works. They’re the reasonable side of making money off the internet, as compared to the spam and scams that proliferate.
Let's not go too far :-)
Internet advertising is basically screwed -- at least in the sense of conventional display advertising in support of editorial content. Advertising exists for its own purposes now -- within Trade Me, or in the social media strategies of businesses that might once have reached their target audiences by advertising in publications that those audiences read.
Even conventional advertising campaigns are considerably more mechanised. When you look at a Facebook buy on paper, it looks pretty compelling. It's just ... soulless.
When we started taking advertising, I really thought that we'd get a lot more bFM -level advertising -- ads from people who were part of the same communities as the readership -- but that has never really happened. As I said, I like the music and arts ads we carry, but it ain't a business.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
If Dotcom’s statement about the incentives system yesterday was true (I have no idea, I never explored it) then it was only available to premium users and only on files under 100MB. None of the pirated content I ever came across on MegaUpload was split into small chunks and imposing that limit certainly doesn’t make it seem like they were encouraging piracy.
I found two academic papers on the economics of file-locker incentive schemes:
Paying for Piracy? An Analysis of One-Click Hosters’ Controversial Reward Schemes is the more sophisticated of them. It puts some actual numbers to the schemes (“Megaupload used to reward one million downloads with $1,500”) and concludes:
Our measurements show that the potential income of most uploaders is very low. Hence, these uploaders must have a di erent incentive rather than money. On the other hand, a few uploaders can earn signi cant amounts of money. This mix of uploader motivations has implications on proposed anti-piracy measures … pro t-oriented uploaders are a small minority of all uploaders, and they are not essential for the ecosystem to survive.
The majoritarian altruistic uploaders are not aff ected by this class of measures as long as sites remain available where they can upload and share their fi les. More generally, our findings suggest that the overall impact of the OCHs’ affiliate programmes on piracy activities may be overstated: Most users upload content despite earning next to nothing. Discontinuation of the aliate programmes would deprive pro fit-oriented pirates of their illegal income, but it seems that these programmes are not the main driving force behind OCH-based piracy.
I could find no mention anywhere on the internet of the 100MB file limit, but this paper notes that Megaupload’s scheme was closed shortly before the bust, so perhaps there was a time – when everyone was getting anxious – where the 100MB applied. If it did, it certainly wasn’t well-known.
The other paper is Profiting From Filesharing: A Measurement Study of Economic Incentives in Cyberlockers
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Moz,
It’s not a protest against you, it’s a protest against Kim DotCom and his ilk. I assume you don’t see yourself in that camp. But then, I also assume you look at what the common ad-blockers block and actively work around them.
Ha! I have a very long list of better things to do that that.
Or at least, I see the “ads by scoop” text and “Onya’s” image on this page.
One of which is actually an ad position, yes. The other is an expired awards brag that really should be removed.
And I guess I should be addressing I/S, who tends to take the moral high ground rather forthrightly on this He said:
As someone who uses Adblock to control what I see, I have zero sympathy for advertisers getting “hijacked” in this way. Sorry, but its my screen, not yours, and I’ll decide what I see there thanks.
Well, I/S, you can rest assured that we’ll still be around whatever. I fortunately don’t need to earn a living from PA (although I really wish I could pay off my debt to CactusLab), but the advertising market is a lot more important to Scoop, who sell our ads as well as their own. It’s their primary source of income, and they need to pay wages, and run an office and servers etc.
People treat Scoop as if it’s infrastructure – the national noticeboard where all press statements are published – but it’s also a business. That work is done by people who deserve to be paid for what they do. How many links from your blog go to Scoop? How many times do you use it every year?
You’re not about to bring down anything by using an ad-blocker as an individual – but if everyone took the same stance as you, there wouldn’t be any Scoop to rely on. You may wish to consider parallels with, say, taxes and resource use. Or at least come down from that high horse.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
So, once again, I register my preference for a regular auto payment to PA., like I do for Scoop. Can this be done?
A shared payments system across a number of sites is under discussion. I'll keep you posted.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Sacha,
bit more nuanced than than, Cameron
It's Barnsley Bill. Hello, Bill.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Moz,
When I see Russell say that he gets effectively nothing out of that misappropriation that makes me even more inclined to block ads.
To clarify, AdSense is basically a washout for us. Google can’t sensibly match our content to advertising and our readers never click on anything. It works better for specialist blogs and the like.
Media agency advertising has tended to go in a direction that doesn’t suit us – especially performance-based (ie: cost-per-click) ads, because, like I said, our readers never click on anything – but it’s been nice to have the current banner campaign for UKTV’s Doctor Who archive season. I think we’re a good audience for that.
I suspect you’ll also see more things like the current Telecom/Nokia campaign (where Emma Hart and others have been using and reviewing the new phones), because content like that can’t be mechanised Facebook-style. That won’t make me anything, but it’s a phone and some cash for Emma.
On the other hand, we do make a little from ads from the music and arts sectors, and always do a good price for them. If you guys choose to block them you’re not really costing us money (we’ll probably make our impressions target anyway) but you’re blocking something that is, in its way part of the site. I makes me feel good that they’re there, anyway.
Block ads, don’t buy ads, actively look for better ways to monetise your content.
Thanks for the advice. Try not to get too high and mighty about it. Ad-blocking’s not exactly a highly-committed form of protest.
(And if you're one of the people who's chipped in when I've asked for contributions -- thanks!)
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
If Fox claims and monetises Simpsons episodes and clips are they then breaking their licensing contracts with overseas broadcasters who likely have various rights to exclusivity etc?
I think the YouTube model is pretty flawed as well.
Ssssshhhh. It works if nobody talks about it.
That's how we can have nice things like BBC music documentaries on YouTube.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to jeremy gray,
No way any smart sys-admin will allow it on any remotely sensitive computers.
Good point. I think we could expect to see it turn up in anti-virus packages.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I think Mr Dotcom may be commenting on the pervasiveness of ‘pirated’ content on youtube
I think you'd be surprised how much of that is there on a claim-and-monetise basis. YouTube's content detection is pretty impressive.
This does not, of course, excuse Google's gaming of tax systems.