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After all, we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. 
And nor is the Web totally free.
Whether we realize it or not, most of the Web’s behind the scenes costs are funded by Web users. They pay either directly or indirectly, and in a variety of ways, including access and service fees, purchases, commission on sales, their personal data being “traded” as sale leads, etc.
Revenue also comes from Web companies and other investors, who plough in cash in the hope (or sometimes “youthful exuberance) of one day realizing huge returns.
| Did you know that on February 7, 2008, the last Super Tuesday, political columnist Matt Drudge’s popular Web log attracted 25,674,739 visits? That was a world record! |
In addition to this hope and the “not-so-free” surfing comes paid advertising. You know the sort – all kinds of annoying pop-ups, banner ads and floats. And spam, of course, tons of spam, aggressive, noisy, polluting the cyber-space with false or empty links and thousands, perhaps millions, of fake websites existing merely to fool the search engines into listing them high in the results of “free” search lists. |
There’s nothing wrong with ads
- if you like or need them. |
That same day, his Web log “served” (to use the industry lingo) 99,519,439 ad impressions. That’s more than 4 million ads an hour, nearly 70 thousand a minute.
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But wouldn’t you rather have the option of paying Matt as little as one US cent to be able to read his excellent column or check the latest primary election results without the hassle of waiting till the next banner ad downloads, indeed without any ads at all?
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