Re: Promotional Widgets
I know it was on the page, agreement, whatever that promotional widgets would display. But, 5 in the last hour? Can you tone that down?
Sigh.
Problem is, i can understand where Chumby is coming from. Advertisers know that people don't pay attention to these ads, much less act on them. I am an advertiser (not with Chumby, but with Google and Yahoo using PPC). The clickthrough rate is ridiculously low. My fear is that we are gonna be subjected to tons of ads just to get advertisers ROI.
If the advertising was opt-in and there was some benefit to having it, sure i could see it being a win-win. But seeing the ads just pisses me off. I can honestly say that if I *realized* that it was an ad supported project I wouldn't have bought a Chumby. I like the Chumby, just don't like the ads.
To those of you who say, well just leave the ads in, ignore them. That is defeating the point, because once it becomes clear that the ads are ignored, there will likely be even more invasive ads.
IMO you can't sell me on the idea of providing the service based on ads after I spent $200, especially when you are forced to use the service to make the device functional in the first place. Make the ads optional, and then make them worth receiving.
I like Tommy's idea above. I'd much rather pay a sub fee than see ads. I don't want to see ads on my night stand. OR, if the cost of pushing out the widgets is too much, untether the Chumby service from the device. Let people pull widgets from other places, if thats the case. Maybe that can already be done? I don't know. I have some widgets i want to see but don't want to upload them to Chumby.com (work related stuff).