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).

Re: Promotional Widgets

I was all set to buy one this month, but the ads are a deal breaker for me I'm afraid.

To repeat what was posted earlier, if I look at my alarm clock for the time in the morning and it's displaying an ad, that's a big deal.

Perhaps a little niche, but It also means I can't reliably use Chumby with widgets for home and buildings control (e.g. HVAC monitoring, security, etc).

Just how much would a non-ad subscription likely cost?

Re: Promotional Widgets

If you are going to have ads, maybe an option to choose the ad widgets you actually want to see might be a way to make it palatable.  Let's say Newegg.com creates a widget with daily specials.  At least that might be something I might be interested in seeing instead of something like an ad for something I would never use.  Just a thought.

Re: Promotional Widgets

We appreciate all the feedback on this as we make the Chumby Network service affordable (FREE) for our users.  The best model, and the one we will emphasize, is where you select the sponsored content that you want, e.g., if you want a particular news or weather widget and it carries a promotional message as part of it, fine, your choice (an example here would be the MTV News widget).  Maybe this is proprietary content and you don't mind the promotional blurb in order to get the content you want from some third party -- but if you hate *any* promotion on *any* widget, then you're certainly free to choose other user-contributed widget alternatives that don't carry ads.  Of course these aren't likely to have big media company content in them because those guys have to have some economic justification for creating these widgets.  Now for the "interstitial" spots, i.e., the widgets that appear in your widget channels and that weren't specifically selected by you, our goal here is to make these conform to your interests, i.e., make them about things we know you want because you've told us in one way or another.  But for the foreseeable future, most of these interstitial spots are going to be essentially what they are now, but only better -- tips on how to use your chumby better, introduction to new Chumby content or services, etc. -- basically Chumby communicating to you about how to make your Chumby experience better.  These interstitials just haven't been an enormous focus for us so far given other priorities, and we recognize that they're getting repetitive at this point, but they'll get better.  It is certainly in our mutual interest not to alienate everyone with uninteresting and inappropriate ads -- so we're going to move carefully here and do this in a way that the large majority of our community will appreciate and support.

Re: Promotional Widgets

IMHO the best way to go is to follow the current Advertising based system. In the not so distant future when the system goes LIVE for real. I suggest that you put in place an optional subscription system giving those people who prefer to NOT have ads an option to pay for the privilege.
This enables everybody to be happy and allows for a revenue stream to the company for use of the chumby either way.

There is no way that the Chumby system will survive as a subscription only based system. Remember guys if it fails we all end up with useless hunks of plastic and wire beside our beds.
It is in all of our interest to support the chumby and the company who has created it and supports it with soft and firm ware as well as content resources.
Since the chumby is an open source hunk of hardware if in fact the system fails there will no doubt some sort of afterlife for it.

There will also no doubt some creative person who designs a widget or firmware which somehow thwarts the ad based system.

As for the tanks missiles, rolls, maybach and other toys...All I can say is when the chumby empire is sold out to the highest bidder along with the 1000000 subscribers (that is magic number these days) We hope that you remember that it was US that you built the foundation of the chumby empire upon. I would like to see a $10,000.00 payout to the first 5000 chumby owners as a gift for their early support and tolerance.
Can't we work that into the basic agreement?
It would certainly give some incentive to those people to help the chumby along.

Yaesumofo

A Chumby in hand is worth 20 in the Wherehouse.

31 (edited by bobs 2008-01-14 05:25:56)

Re: Promotional Widgets

I have not found any policy details on promotional widgets (how often, can they override currently running widgets, will they effect the alarm clock function etc).  I am very concerned that Chumby may cause many of us to shutdown if these widgets get out of control.  I may hold up on my purchase until there is an option to pay for the service and forgo the risk of excessive (or ill timed) promotional widgets down the road.

As a side question, does the "Now playing on this chumby" demo accurately include these promotional widgets?

Re: Promotional Widgets

> Well, what might happen is that we go out of business, then no chumbys for anyone.  It would prove that the "prevent hacking by customers" crowd was right all along.

No, it wouldn't. It would prove that your business model is faulty, which isn't the same thing.

33 (edited by yaesumofo 2008-01-15 00:31:51)

Re: Promotional Widgets

Are you going to take your TV back and turn off your cable or satellite?
What about surfing the web? How do you manage to do that with no ads?
It i pretty easy to tolerate.
The point is the chumby is a service. you either pay with money. Or pay with ads. I for one would rather NOT spend money on it so I am happy to tolerate the odd ad.
Yaesumofo\\








scary fast wrote:

I was all set to buy one this month, but the ads are a deal breaker for me I'm afraid.

To repeat what was posted earlier, if I look at my alarm clock for the time in the morning and it's displaying an ad, that's a big deal.

Perhaps a little niche, but It also means I can't reliably use Chumby with widgets for home and buildings control (e.g. HVAC monitoring, security, etc).

Just how much would a non-ad subscription likely cost?

A Chumby in hand is worth 20 in the Wherehouse.

Re: Promotional Widgets

> Are you going to take your TV back and turn off your cable or satellite?

Well, sort of - I turned off my cable television about eight years ago. I watch DVDs and podcasts on my television - no ads.

> What about surfing the web? How do you manage to do that with no ads?

I use Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock Plus, NoScript and Remove It Permanently (RIP). You should try it sometime.

Re: Promotional Widgets

I got my ChumbyOne today. All I wanted was a simple device that shows the current weather, the weather forecast and maybe a radar image. The Weather Channel widget does almost exactly what I want, and there are a few others that offer variations.

Unfortunately, then the "promotional widget" started showing up. Within an hour, my pleasure with this device completely disappeared.

Oh well, it was worth a try, but I'm certainly not going to use a device over which I cannot exert full control. I'm happy to tell it never connect to chumby.com once it's set up. I don't plan to change things again.

I could work around the problem in a variety of ways (modify the Chumby software, modify my network routes at the firewall, etc.), but the easiest way is to return the Chumby.

One massively unhappy (soon to be ex-) customer who will warn everyone against the Chumby now.

36 (edited by Gompka 2009-12-09 13:21:33)

Re: Promotional Widgets

Admiral wrote:

I got my ChumbyOne today. All I wanted was a simple device that shows the current weather, the weather forecast and maybe a radar image. The Weather Channel widget does almost exactly what I want, and there are a few others that offer variations.

Unfortunately, then the "promotional widget" started showing up. Within an hour, my pleasure with this device completely disappeared.

Oh well, it was worth a try, but I'm certainly not going to use a device over which I cannot exert full control. I'm happy to tell it never connect to chumby.com once it's set up. I don't plan to change things again.

I could work around the problem in a variety of ways (modify the Chumby software, modify my network routes at the firewall, etc.), but the easiest way is to return the Chumby.

One massively unhappy (soon to be ex-) customer who will warn everyone against the Chumby now.

Now I think that is very ignorant, it says right on the Chumby website that the promotions are there. I don't care for them myself either, but its not like you didn't know, and if you didn't its only your own fault. Hopefully in the future Chumby Industries will be able to host the widgets on their own servers without the adverts.

Re: Promotional Widgets

g33k wrote:

> Are you going to take your TV back and turn off your cable or satellite?

Well, sort of - I turned off my cable television about eight years ago. I watch DVDs and podcasts on my television - no ads.

> What about surfing the web? How do you manage to do that with no ads?

I use Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock Plus, NoScript and Remove It Permanently (RIP). You should try it sometime.

Don't tell me you avoid ads completely. what about all the "forced previews" on the DVDs that cannot be skipped forward?

Re: Promotional Widgets

Admiral wrote:

I got my ChumbyOne today. All I wanted was a simple device that shows the current weather, the weather forecast and maybe a radar image. The Weather Channel widget does almost exactly what I want, and there are a few others that offer variations.

Unfortunately, then the "promotional widget" started showing up. Within an hour, my pleasure with this device completely disappeared.

Oh well, it was worth a try, but I'm certainly not going to use a device over which I cannot exert full control. I'm happy to tell it never connect to chumby.com once it's set up. I don't plan to change things again.

I could work around the problem in a variety of ways (modify the Chumby software, modify my network routes at the firewall, etc.), but the easiest way is to return the Chumby.

One massively unhappy (soon to be ex-) customer who will warn everyone against the Chumby now.

This topic has been discussed to death on the forums. When you ordered the chumby, there was a VERY clear mention that there are ads... I could start quoting thread after thread but its been beaten to death...

Re: Promotional Widgets

Keep smaller groups of widgets in your channels, it helps a bit, but yes this has been discussed ad-nauseum.

40 (edited by Wburg 2009-12-10 19:39:47)

Re: Promotional Widgets

I too think Chumby could do a better job of communicating that there will be ads, as I didn't know there would be any until this thread. That being said, I understand and accept it. I do have a few ideas for how to make them more tolerable:

1. Youtube style bar ads at the bottom of the screen. A swipe could make them go away, a click to enlarge them.

2. What about a clock widget that displays ads? In exchange for loading that widget (and having it displayed enough), ads aren't put between other widgets. 1/2 to 3/4 of the screen would be a clock and calendar with the remaining space reserved for an ad. That might even boost your total ad display time.

3. If you get the professionally developed widgets like you mentioned, they could be nominally added in exchange for not displaying other ads. Of course you'd have to require a minimum amount of display time for that, too.

I don't know how feasible it would be, but a possible method of regulating the second two ideas could be to measure the amount of play time. For example, if you play the Mountain Dew sponsored snowboarding game for 10 minutes, you don't get any other ads that day.

Edit:

I'm sure there are plenty of ways to work out other ad-based widgets. For example, a widget that allows you to not only look up movie times and reviews, but watch previews, too. Maybe even tag the previews that look interesting and have it remind you when that movie comes out.

Re: Promotional Widgets

Let me ad there should be do not call hours for ads... as in,, for so many minutes after an alarm event, and before x hour of the day (using the internal clock as the reference), and not after y hour at night....

Re: Promotional Widgets

I'm a brand new Chumby user, after having watched it since it was first announced years ago.  I just couldn't do the plush thing, but at the new price and the 'harder' styling made me make the jump.

It's crazy, I have read a LOT of reviews on the Chumby and read quite a bit, but I really never noticed anything about the promotional ads.  Maybe I was subconsciously trying to not see it or something, but the first I saw of it was when managing my channels and saw the little disclaimer at the bottom.

I have to say if you think I'm ok with you advertising passively in my home, you are kidding yourself.  That just isn't tenable.  I'll be joining the hacking community immediately to figure out how to get around it, this just isn't a business model I can support.

You've made a neat device, the hardware is very cool, though the software really seems pretty rough around the edges still.  But you need to make it work somehow else.. having things I didn't ask for appear in MY HOME is ridiculous, my god, where is the honor there? smile

That's my quite disappointed rant,

-Nic

Re: Promotional Widgets

I understand people's concerns about the ads, but it seems like everyone is making this much more of a big deal than it is.

I've had my C1 for about 3 weeks now, and have only ran across ads twice.  Both times it was in a channel with 8 widgets (keep your channels to only a few widgets, and I'll bet you never see an ad).  Both times it was Chumby announcing what the newest widgets available were.  Both times it took half a second to open the control panel, press "Delete", and resume normal use.  If that's what Chumby plans on doing to help support the bandwidth and hosting, then I'm all for it.  I know time is precious to some people, but I'd rather give up 10 seconds of my day than give up my chumby.  Can't really complain about "wasting" some of my time to delete an ad when all I'm doing is cruising through some widgets...  clearly I'm not making the most efficient use of my time to begin with.

Re: Promotional Widgets

Here’s my two cents – really only worth two cents since I haven’t received the product yet, but hopefully expresses similar concerns as others.

I missed the statement that advertisements would be forced upon me.  Others have stated this is clearly stated on the Chumby website.  I agree, it is stated, but it is not stated in the same prominent manner by which the “sexy” features are advertised, resulting in the number of users, like me, that have missed it.  It makes me feel a little bit like being the victim of bait-and-swap.  Don’t get me wrong, I still want to give the product a shot, but wish I made the purchase without feeling I purchased something different than what I thought I was buying. 

The idea of deleting the added channels after I’ve deleted them means I’m not in control of a device I purchased.    I’m fine with the ads, as long as I’m empowered to delete widgets (permanently) if I feel the associated advertising content is too intrusive, and keep those widgets which are more valuable to me than the associated advertising content. 

I am most upset with the concept of how the ads are being sent without me being in control.  Even given this, I’m anticipating/hoping that once I receive the product, everything will be fine as if the ads were really intrusive; the message boards would be full of complaints.

Re: Promotional Widgets

It was stated a while back, but I agree with the idea of the chumby owners choosing between ads or pay. Before I bought my Chumby I would have said ads. Now I would probably pay. How much can be made per customer on ads anyway? $50 - $75 a year? If you were an advertiser how much would you pay for an ad on a 3.5" screen?

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: Promotional Widgets

I always knew that there would be promo widgets and don't mind at ALL. It wasn't like it was news to me!

Re: Promotional Widgets

djharn wrote:

I agree, it is stated, but it is not stated in the same prominent manner by which the “sexy” features are advertised, resulting in the number of users, like me, that have missed it.

Yeah, why on earth wouldn't they display the fact that they might push promotional ads in huge, prominent letters? 

How is this any different than your normal legal writing on products?   Do you read the Terms of Service for all the products you buy?

Considering they're trying to sell a product, I'd say they spelled it out pretty well without freaking people out.