An advertising revenue model for our product might be a method to provide an additional revenue stream besides restaurant order commission, which could help ensure that our operations can make a profit overall and thus allow us to continue offering food at affordable prices. However, a potential con is balancing the actual “Plates” platform content on the app, and the space allocated for ad displays.
For the Internet overall, an advertising revenue model can be an effective way to earn money, particularly for platforms or products that users are unlikely to be willing to pay directly for. However, advertising runs the risk of making users annoyed or even turning users away if there are too many ads on the platform or associated with the product. And as described in the Reply All podcast episode “We Know What Your Did,” the messaging or content of some ads do not align with the values of the product and could cause unwelcome associations if the ad choices are completely randomized. Furthermore, a fundamental concern is the underlying privacy issues if ads are especially targeted towards users. While pop-up ads, invented in the mid-90s and described in the podcast episode as the “Internet version of cockroaches,” are now mostly gone, they have been replaced by a new form of ads that are data-driven. People today tend to assume that surveillance is necessary for things on the “free” Internet, but the question remains whether this assumption is one we should accept.
