November 04, 2015

Those willing to cut a deal with the real owners of limited attention spans for ads, will come out ahead.

Sir, I refer to Jeevan Vasagar and Robert Cookson’s report “Axel Springer winning fight against ad-blockers” November 4,

And on Axel Springer’s website I found that: “Axel Springer finds the business model of ad-blocker services to be unlawful. This applies to both the blocking of advertising on publishing websites as well as to the ’whitelisting’ service, which publishers can pay for to free themselves of the advertising block, which is an extortionate approach according to Axel Springer.”

And I was left wondering… why is it unlawful to block the way into my limited attention span and not to enter into it?

So now, if we want to have access to BILD we have to accept the ads, or subscribe to it paying 2.99 Euros per month. Hold it there; is not my limited attention span worth anything?

I have figured out that I have about room for 64 30-second ads per week which makes about 256 per month. And I have decided that my using up that limited attention span should be worth about 1 Euro for any 30-second ad to me; on which I would accept to pay a 30 percent commission for managing my preferences.

And so now my calculations are: First is access to BILD worth 3 Euros per month to me, and, if so, should I pay BILD in cash, or with 3 30-seconds attention spans?

But what if BILD cheats and wants to pump more pieces of attention spans out of me?

And so here’s my proposal. BILD if you have an article I am interested in, and I read it, then I will look, with interest, at any 30 second ad you send me. And, if you sell that to a client who is sufficiently interested in me to pay me 1 Euro, you can keep 30 percent of it, in order to split it any which way you want between yourself and the writer of that article.

And then of course I am going to rank how well BILD is my interests and my need of intellectual diversity.

Current business model are based on the assumptions that we the recipients of ads have unlimited attention span and that is simply not true… you should look at my inbox even after the span filter has done its job.

I foresee throat-cutting competition for attention spans for ads, and those cutting a deal with the owners of it will come out ahead.

And if the BILDs of the world do not want to make that kind of deal with us ad viewers, I am sure many ad-blockers– duly authorized by us – would love to do so.

And Sir, any good results BILD is reporting now, are as pyrrhic as can be.

@PerKurowski ©