Initially, our team only focused on how to make the app better and did not give much thought to how to advertise the product. With inputs from “We Know What You Did”, I will be talking about the pros and cons of an advertising revenue model in the context of BOBO.
Personally, I feel like sophisticated apps that provide services do not have any pop-up ads. This trend can be seen in our competitors such as Uber and Lyft where their revenue does not come from in-app ads. In order for our users to truly enjoy the service BOBO provides we do not want to have ads in the app.
Pros
- generates revenue by partnering with other companies (less work for us)
- easy to add/implement
- if it generates enough revenue it would allow us to make the price of our trips/subscriptions cheaper which can lead to higher usage
Cons
- Pop-up ads are not actually very common on the Internet today, and ads can feel non-intrusive to the browsing experience.
- Very difficult to tailor/match websites with ads, especially around brand image and values.
- to have effective ads we would need to collect more user data than we like to
- Pop-up ads are annoying and take away from the user experience.
- The public has become too comfortable with being under surveillance.
With regard to individual well-being, I do not think ads are good as it can end up invading user’s privacy and cause them to lose trust in the app. For example, AI models/algorithms would be used to talior ads displayer for each user and they could feel watched when ads of what they searched show up in our app.
