Week Notes: Vol. 3 – № 6

Death, taxes, and ads

Benjamin Franklin famously penned, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

I’ll say, less famously, nothing is certain except death, taxes, and ads.

And as long as there are ads, there will be ways to pay to avoid them.

Money can be made, of course, shilling both the irritant and the remedy.

This realization hit me years ago when my oldest was two. Watching old episodes of random kids’ shows on YouTube, he’d get frustrated by the ads.

Then, he learned we could skip the ads, reducing his time as a captive audience to mere seconds. Unthinkable to me as a Millenial. Back in my day, ads were a rite of passage.

Now, both of my boys instinctively shout, “look it!” whenever an ad interrupts their screen time.

There will always be ads.

Newspapers shifted from subscriptions to ads. Radio turned to toll broadcasting. Television scaled with the help of program sponsorships.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but they say it often rhymes.

Google started by trying to democratize search. Results were based on relevance and authority, not paid placements.

Then the ads came.

Facebook began as a place for college students to connect. Grow first, monetize later. Then the ads came.

YouTube took the same approach, focused at first on making it easy for people to upload, share, and watch videos online.

Then the ads came.

The lack of ads made Netflix a major draw when streaming peaked.

Then the ads came.

We’re seeing it now with generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google Gemini. What started as free, limited-access tools will soon be another engine for influence.

Just like mobile games. Just like Instagram. Just like podcasts.

I remember around 2012 or 2013 when podcasts started getting more traction. Adventures in Design was one of my favorites then.

One episode in particular has stuck with me several years later now that podcasts have become what they are.

The host, Mark Brickey, aired his grievances about dedicating so much time to the show but having no way to make money.

His frustration wasn’t misplaced. His problem was timing.

Ads were rare for podcasts. Patreon was in its infancy.

Switching to paid subscriptions meant you had to move your show to a different platform that didn’t play nice with the Apple podcast app or the few other options.

You could easily lose the audience you spent so much time building.

Of course, within a few years the industry changed. Adventures in Design is now a full-blown community, buoyed by the rapid changes in podcast distribution, tech, and obviously advertising.

When real money is to be made, there will always be ads.