There are several pros and cons of an advertising revenue model for our product of personalized scrapbooks.
A pro of using an advertising revenue is that this would reduce the price of our product, or possibly make our product free. This would allow our product to become more accessible to a wider range of people.
However, there are more cons for adopting an adverting revenue model for our personalized scrapbook product compared to pros. A drawback of using advertisements is that it would make the process become less personalized. This could potentially affect individual well-being because the presence of ads in a personalized product could cause a user to feel less valued. Furthermore, using ads could cause users to feel like they are under surveillance. For a product which uses personalized memories, adding advertisements is out of place. Advertisements do not make sense, specifically, for our product because our product lends well to a subscription model, especially since we are incorporating the physical aspect of a scrapbook. Users are not only paying for the experience of using an app, but also for a premium physical product.
There is also much to consider about the pros and cons of an advertising revenue for the internet overall. As outlined in the “We Know What You Did” podcast episode, advertisements are beneficial because they help keep the internet free. However, Ethan Zuckerman regrets making the advertising revenue model so prevalent through creating pop-up ads. He mentions how pop up ads have normalized users to experiencing intrusive and surveillant advertising, which has made people less wary about privacy concerns. However, there are ways to reduce the negative impacts of the advertising revenue model, such as asking people to pay for what they deem valuable on the internet instead of “tricking them” to pay.
