An advertising revenue model for our product generally would not be very effective. Though setting up advertising is very easy and data collected from our specific demographic could be valuable to some advertisers, our main product is a service, and advertising works best when the primary goal is building a larger audience (which scales ad revenue), which is not exactly what we are optimizing for. There are some pros to tracking and collecting user info and data in order to personalize their experience, as we could offer features like recommendations for e-transit options or providing city-specific information, but there is a fine line between using user data for good and exploiting them. Plus, it is more important for us to be able to make revenue from our service itself.
Advertising revenue models for the internet overall is, in a way, a cop-out solution. It is the easiest to implement, leads to the highest chance of getting funded, makes a lot of money, and allows a company to offer their product for free. For some companies like Facebook, it makes the business possible. But, targeted ads are “crappy”—since the main metric for ads is page views and mouse clicks and not thoughtful engagement, many ads are simply there to draw the user’s attention and serve as clickbait. Additionally, although data collected from users can help companies add personalization features, personalization is not a strictly good thing and can create spaces like echo chambers. Most importantly, targeted ads are invasive and it is nearly impossible to disentangle advertising and surveillance in the current state of the web.
