The singular pro of the advertising revenue for our product would be that we would have financial backing to support the development of our product past the MVP. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be very much since our product isn’t designed to have users remain on the app as long as possible. Our deals with advertisers would be more covert in that we would sell data about user’s interest tags to third parties for targeted ads, and we would use user referrals to get more users onto the platform sharing interest data. Another pro from an ethical standpoint is that because our product doesn’t encourage long periods of usage, users can’t be inundated with ads.
As I write in my midterm essay, the advertising model indirectly harms individual well-being by contributing and facilitating the attention economy model. Advertising revenue motivates companies to create digital products that will draw users in and keep them engaged. This can create addictive and compulsive behaviors that reduce people’s happiness, self-esteem, and general quality of life. The way to reduce the negative impact of this revenue model is to ensure usage is moderated so that users are encouraged to step away after a healthy period of use.
