this is such a wild comment -- there are countless products where regardless of purchase -- the user is still served advertisements. i have no idea what reality, or timeline, this comment belongs in.
broadcast television, paid streaming entertainment is just straight up the most glaringly obvious example of a paid service overflowing with advertisements.
paid radio broadcasts (xm/Sirius).
operating systems (windows serves you ads any chance it gets).
monthly subscriptions to gyms where youre constantly hit with ads, marketing, and promotions be it at the gym or via push notification (you got opted into and therefore have to opt out of intentionally after the service is paid).
mobile phones, especially prepaid come LOADED with ads and bloatware.
Those are hybrid subscriptions/subsidies. Not paid in full.
If you are being exposed to ads in something you paid for, you are almost certainly being charged less money. Companies can compete on cost by introducing ads, and it's why the cheaper you go, the more ad infested it gets.
Pure ad-free things tend to be much more expensive then their ad subsidized counterparts. Ad subsidized has become so ubiquitous though, that people think that price is the true price.
this seems like semantics and corporate hand-waving -- that's not what is conveyed to the user in what i have observed as the context of paid services and the promises asserted around what a purchase gets a customer.
in the subsidized example, xm/Sirius is marketed to users as an "ad-free paid radio broadcast"; the marketing literally attempts to leverage the notion of it being ad-free as a consequence of your purchase (power) in order to highlight its supposed competitive edge and usefulness, and provide the user an incentive to spend money, except for the fact that the marketing is false. you still get served promotions and ads, just less "conventional" ads.
i go to a football game and im literally inundated with ads -- the whole game has time stoppage dedicated to serving ads. i guess my season ticket purchase with the hopes of seeing football in person is.. apparently not spending enough money?
i see this as attempting to move the goalposts and gaslight users on their purchase expectations, as a way to offload the responsibility and accountability back onto the user -- "you don't pay enough, you only think that you pay enough, so we are still going to serve you ads because <insert financial justification here around the expectations we'e undermined>.
why then is there any expectation of a service being ad-free upon purchasing?
who the hell actually enjoys sitting through 1.5 hours of advertisements and play stoppage?
over time users have been conditioned to just tolerate it, and over time, the advertising reclaims ground it previously gave up one inch at a time in the same way people are price-gouged in those stadiums -- they don't have much alternative, but apparently the problem is the user should fork up more money for tickets so as to align their expectations with reality? while they're getting strong-armed at the concession stand via proximity and circumstance and lack of competition, no less.
are you really trying to tell me the problem there is, they need to make... more money? and THEN and only THEN we can have ad-free, paid for entertainment otherwise known as american football? is this really about user expectations, or is this about companies wanting their cake and eating it, too?
