The advertising revenue model allows the Internet to be free to use at the expense of user attention and user data. Instead of asking users to pay for content, this business model forces companies to compete for user attention, feeding into the harms created by the attention economy. Furthermore, now that user data is being used to generate these ads, data privacy and users rights to data privacy are infringed upon by large companies pushing ads in order to stay afloat with their current business model. The free internet came at the price of user privacy and the user experience. Now the vast majority of the user experience on the internet involves seeing content (ads) that the user never asked for and in exchange for the attention that they potentially give the ads, companies profit.
Given these cons, however, the advertising revenue model has allowed the internet to be free and therefore accessible to all. There is a massive benefit to this. Furthermore, as the ads that come from user data continue to improve, users are being served increasingly relevant ads, some of which may actually be welcome. For example, I recently got served an ad saying that a sweater I had been eyeing for a while was now on sale. While I wasn’t on that specific web page to find out that information, this ad was welcome since it helped me get the sweater at a cheaper price. This could not have been accomplished without my user data and there is a point to be made that most users don’t care too much about how their wed data is being used but care much more about their user experience.
