What are the pros and cons of an advertising revenue model for your product, and the internet overall?
Given the fact that our project focuses on handling sensitive documents, I believe that an advertising revenue model that shows ads on the website could potentially decrease the chances that it is trusted. It could easily look like a means of selling data, even if it is not. However, in some testing, there were some people who stated that they would not be against the idea of ads if that meant they could receive the tool for free. In the podcast, they stated how ads were primary annoying due to the dark patterns ingrained in pop-up ads. For our website, if we use ads, we would make sure to have it be on the side as opposed to something that blocks content and needs proactive deletion. The pro for our website is simply that we would be able to profit even on the free version. In addition, given that our content is going to be privated per user and the content is unlikely to be inappropriate, companies might be more willing to advertise on the website. However, looking at financial institutions, which have to be trustworthy, and document apps like Google docs and Figma, there are not ads. This makes me suspect that there are better methods in revenue stream and/or people do not want to use apps that have apps in that manner. I would highly consider how ads affect our initial user population count.
