It’s clear that an advertising revenue model has yielded mixed results in the way it has historically been implemented; the podcast episode revealed that even since the elimination of the pop-up ad, advertisements in general have questionable qualities about them. They bring up issues of privacy, surveillance, and digital freedoms of users, and as the internet continues to evolve, it’s almost guaranteed that advertisements will encroach more and more on users’ personal liberties. With these cons in mind, I’m not sure how successful this revenue model would be for our product at WavePower Energies, as our initiatives are focused on enacting social good and are not geared towards individual users on the internet who will be exposed to digital ads.
I think there is some merit to this revenue model in general, however. The pros include accessibility to individual users, the ability to customize the ad experience based on user interests, and the consistency/reliability of revenue if a digital channel has frequent visits. These advantages are ones that our company can potentially consider when marketing our product, especially since digital channels with themes of social good, climate change, and innovative technology are are becoming increasingly popular. Utilizing this revenue generation method will also allow us to determine the interest of different kinds of users in our company (keeping in mind what Christina mentioned during class about most new products failing because there is no actual need for them, this is important to ensure there exists vested interested in our product.)
