Rettberg claims that “as people spend more time online they spend less time on other media. This means that the tried and tested sale strategies of the previous generation… aren’t working as well as they used to” (128). Basically, because we are spending more time on the computer and the web we have less time to spend watching TV or listening to the Radio (the once kings of advertising). This particular excerpt was very interesting to me in part because I almost never watch TV anymore (which for some reason makes this all the more prevalent to me), but mostly because of how the blogging community reacted when ads began integrating into the web. Chapter 6 speaks about blogs as a means to make money, and some of the methods to do it. Adding ads to you blog is one of the mentioned strategies’, along with donations and such. The thing that got me was that ads can bring a fairly steady income, like it has for Dooce and yet many people complained about the early addition of these ads (Rettberg, 132-133). Now, I will not sit here and lie that I enjoy ads popping up in my face when I watch a YouTube Video, or the ones that play music while I am trying to read something. Truly I cannot stand them and most of them are selling things I have no need for; but for the most part I will tolerate them simply because I can understand why ads are there, and I just enjoy the site to much to give it up over some ads. Apparently I am not the only person to think this way because this is exactly what happened with Dooce. Even with the introduction of ads, her readership still continued to grow because people cared more about what she had to say then the annoyance provided by the ads. So while people may dislike ads and people may complain about them, in the end the site gets needed income from them, they are for the most part easy enough to ignore and I guess we brought this on ourselves by spending more time blogging then watching TV.
Btw, 364 words makes a serious wall of text. ^
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