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Comment by gaustin | Hacker News Reader

> They pay a truck load of money to reach 300-500 paying readers per day?

> But they won’t pay as much to reach an avalanche of non paying readers?

It seems to me that advertisers might prefer a small number of people willing to pay money for something, rather than an avalanche of free loaders. Not all eyeballs are created equally. Isn't this a motivation for improving the targeting of advertising?

Most Wired content is available for free on the website, right? So, I wonder how many more people would buy the app if it were free.

Edited to clarify a few phrases

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> Isn't this obvious with all of the talk about improving the targeting of advertising?

It's not the same thing ... targeted advertising doesn't mean reaching people with more money. It means reaching people when they are in the mood for spending on your product (the right time / the right place).

E.g. even if you are a big spender, are you willing to buy a baby pram right now? How about a woman that has uploaded photos of her newborn to Facebook? You may have millions of dollars that you're willing to spend, but that said woman is more likely to buy baby gear than you.

> It means reaching people when they are in the mood for spending on your product (the right time / the right place).

I know that and agree. I think the fact that someone paid for the app is a relevant positive targeting indicator for an advertiser, and not a negative because of the smaller audience. I have to admit that I don't have any data to back up my thought, and maybe what I'm talking about isn't what other people are talking about when they think about targeted advertising.

> How about a woman that has uploaded photos of her newborn to Facebook?

Isn't she even more likely to be willing to spend money on baby gear if she's just spent money to put them up on a paid photo sharing site (Flickr Pro, or whatever)?

Like I said above, that's my untested hypothesis.

If this is true... (?) I wonder how many are aware of that? I wasn't.

Which part, the eyeball inequality?

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