from Hacker News

Mockups for a free, ad-supported Uber service

by andrew_null on 3/30/15, 5:01 PM with 50 comments

• by ayushgta on 3/30/15, 5:25 PM

  This reminded me of the future that Black Mirror's Fifteen Million Merits envisions for us: "Everyday activities are constantly interrupted by advertisements that cannot be skipped or ignored without financial penalty." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits

• by jjulius on 3/30/15, 5:34 PM

  I pay for Netflix and Spotify so that I don't have to deal with ads. I'll happily continue to pay for Uber and similar services for the very same reason.

• by Karunamon on 3/30/15, 5:33 PM

  Inevitable? I thought engagement with advertising was going down all over the world.

  How would you ad-support a full ride, anyways? A ~$20 CPI is pretty insane.

• by pbreit on 3/30/15, 6:46 PM

  Advertising works best where the marginal cost of delivering the impression is near-zero (i.e., TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, internet search, Facebook newsfeed, etc).

• by prawn on 3/30/15, 10:09 PM

  Half-bakery: Uber rides funded by menial tasks. You're in a van heading from A to B, while ironing shirts or folding clothes or packing boxes.

• by krschultz on 3/30/15, 9:34 PM

  One of the reasons that ad supported models work is that the marginal cost of providing software is near zero. The marginal cost of providing rides is decidedly non-zero. I would argue that the marginal cost of a ride is going to increase from its present cost.

  * There is a price war going on and some of the providers are losing money. In the short term this will continue, but long term it will correct itself.

  * I believe the regulations on company -> contractors a la Uber will increase and that will cost Uber more per ride.

  * Even if you think the drivers will be replaced with self driving cars, those cars will be more expensive than present day cars.

  I don't think any of that is a problem for Uber as a business charging money. I do think it precludes ad-supported rides.

• by m52go on 3/30/15, 5:20 PM

  > Free, ad-supported Uber rides are inevitable

  What? Why?

  ------------------

  While we're at it, why not post ads along the sides of houses and apartment buildings in the Bay Area to reduce housing costs?

  Maybe if we make the ads small enough, we could fit enough ads on a single surface to make rent free!!!

  /sarc

• by kak9 on 3/30/15, 5:46 PM

  I'm fine with ads. But I see much more promise for ads before getting in car, then after. While waiting for Uber/Lyft I check my phone non-stop. The second I'm in the car the last app I'm opening is Uber/Lyft.

• by mbesto on 3/30/15, 11:03 PM

  Some of the ideas of "why it would work" make sense, but the economics are way off.

  > For example, targeting travelers who are arriving from the airport, to target them with highly personalized hotel/tour offers. Or targeting hardcore movie or concert-goers for their next night out.

  This is the basic premise of the OP's advertising argument. Does anyone book hotel or conferences ad hoc? Anything that is "event" based selling opportunity is a no go, because most event organizers want high up front guarantees of attendees (due to high fixed costs) and usually sell last minute excess at very low margins, so paying a converted CPM at $20 (or heck even $10) is most likely going to bring a negative return.

• by WhitneyLand on 3/30/15, 8:45 PM

  I think there is a bit of a fallacy around certain business models. We're constantly amazed at how much is free or low priced due to being ad supported (Google), Moores Law et al (Dropbox), or strategically subsidized (Amazon).

  The fallacy is that these apply to everything or that it seems easier to apply than it actually is.

  In the case of free Uber, the most I can stretch is to imagine it's possible when the targeting gets so good that a lead is very valuable (weren't cancer class action click throughs going for $200 at one point?). Or as part of some partnership with another company such that other economics are at work besides watch ad = ride free.

  So not only is it not inevitable, it would require some pretty special conditions.

• by dotcoma on 3/30/15, 7:14 PM

  Remember the New Economy? No, a lot of us don't. See, that's the problem.

• by sebastialonso on 3/31/15, 1:40 AM

  I've welcome Uber's business plan. Ads are not the answer for everything. Quite the contrary, I'd argue that ads are the answer for very few problems.

  Money or any monetary transactions plays two roles in these kind of business. The unrecognized one is that it plays the role of guarantee (ideally, but in reality is something like 'more or less'). What guarantee do I have as a driver or as a client if I use an ad-supported billing system, which we all know is next to crap? This is a really poorly-thought idea. Uber's strength is in the elegance of its business model.

• by yellowapple on 3/30/15, 7:11 PM

  I'd be fine with this as long as there's a way to turn this off (or better yet, to make it something entirely opt-in and have to turn it on). I wouldn't want to be bombarded with ads if I'm not interested in them subsidizing my ride.

  Also, is there a way to make these companies just pay me to look at their ads? It'd cut out the middlemen, and seeing how many ads I'd probably be confronted with on a daily basis without things like AdBlock Plus, I could probably turn it into a career if the figures in this article are accurate.

• by BIair on 3/30/15, 10:22 PM

  Why do you think Google has invested so much in self-driving cars?

• by nijiko on 3/30/15, 5:50 PM

  That's not free. You're spending time in exchange for goods. Time you otherwise could save by just spending a few dollars.

  The real annoyance is surge pricing.

• by brianbreslin on 3/30/15, 9:56 PM

  Honestly I hate the idea of MORE ads.

  Also the install driven ad market has its limits. These are all funded by startups buying customers with their VC money.

• by bgnm2000 on 3/30/15, 5:40 PM

  Weird to see all this hate in the comments. Ads aren't the devil. More options to paying for something of value is always beneficial.

• by niche on 3/30/15, 8:57 PM

  An accessible business model that anyone can openly innovate on. Certainly, this must contribute to the $24B valuation...

• by codazoda on 3/30/15, 8:53 PM

  I can imagine these being offered free by companies who want an ear to talk to. If I'm selling time shares, for example, I might want to give free rides and tell people about it on the way. If you got a multi-thousand dollar sell every 100 rides, maybe it's worth it.

• by xb on 3/30/15, 8:04 PM

  Wow, now having looked at the mockup images under the Redirection heading, this does really seem inevitable. Free might be a stretch, but I'd bet that we'll see these types of ads when using rideshare services in the very near future.

• by pjc50 on 3/30/15, 8:51 PM

  There are some countries where the taxi drivers will "advertise" businesses by taxing you to them whether you asked them or not. That's pretty much the only way you could make ad-supported taxis work.

• by ghobs91 on 3/31/15, 3:25 AM

  We're getting to a point where it's just services supported by ads for other services which are supported by ads for other services and so on.

• by aslewofmice on 3/30/15, 5:42 PM

  I don't get the hate, I think it's a great idea. It's completely opt-in and both sides win.

• by mitul_45 on 3/30/15, 10:21 PM

  This makes me sad. The mock-ups, I don't like them much.

• by igammarays on 3/30/15, 5:14 PM

  ugh