alt Hacker NewsThe trouble with charging people is you have to charge everybody the same[1], so you're leaving money on the table with wealthy users, and pricing out poorer users
Ads mean each user 'pays' you according to their spending power
Kinda socialist when you think about it! From each according from his ability...
[1] Obviously companies try to get around this with price discrimination, but it's hard especially for a network effect platform
That is the absolute beauty of the targeted ad situation, isn’t it: you can generate leads for mortgages or expensive enterprise SaaS services, that are happy to pay super high acquisition costs, maximizing revenue from your rich users, and with the same ad inventory, maximize the revenue from your poor users by advertising App Store casino games for children, payday loans, etc. You can see why Meta doesn’t bother offering a paid service here.