Brace yourself, in Chromecast ads are coming

styckx said:

So sick of in app ads, so sick of freemium, so sick of subscription services (ie: PlexPass etc), so sick of pay to win games, so sick of every Android developer (not every, but you get the point) nickel and diming the piss out of users either with ads or micro-transactions. Enough.. Just follow the PC software model that has worked for decades. A set price, minor upgrades are free, major revisions you re-pay. The Android software market is the biggest racket.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

While I agree, the trouble is that video content doesn't really work like software. Every new episode would be a "major" release. It's not like you can release a movie in 2-minute segments. Well, maybe if you're J.J. Abrams...

I don't mind ads as long as I have the option to pay to get rid of them. Even Netflix could opt for a cheaper ad-supported tier if they wanted to.
To be honest, I like apps that are free with ads and paid without as it gives me a way to try the app for a period longer than the Play Store's 15 minutes.

[HOWTO] Chromecast/Netflix outside USA without VPN

Ad Blocking - DD-WRT Wiki

bhiga said:

To be honest, I like apps that are free with ads and paid without as it gives me a way to try the app for a period longer than the Play Store's 15 minutes.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Or that too.

Brightcove is pretty big VOD provider, but yeah, that would work as long as the stuff you want to watch isn't hosted there.
YouTube could be uber sneaky and host the ads on YouTube itself so then it would be all-or-nothing.
On the plus side, YouTube could become the resurrection of AdCritic. I miss that site...

Talk about a blast from the past. Have you seen -

http://creativity-online.com/

I think everybody is struggling to find ways to make money from this technology. Google doesn't make any money on the hardware, and consumers just don't want to pay much for software (which is why the old PC software business model is gradually failing, and you see even companies like Microsoft going to Office 365-type subscriptions). So the result is they have to find a way to make money from subscriptions, fees, and/or advertising.

Google aren't the only ones considering advertising. Mozilla just announced that they're going to start putting ads in Firefox, inserted in the page of recent sites that appears when you open a new tab.

DJames1 said:

you see even companies like Microsoft going to Office 365-type subscriptions). So the result is they have to find a way to make money from subscriptions, fees, and/or advertising.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

The worst thing I've encountered so far with the subscription model is how it virally forces others to buy in.
Case-in-point, I got an Adobe InDesign file that I needed to look at. Fine, I have InDesign CS6. I load it up, and it tells me I can't open it because it was made in InDesign CS7.5
At least Microsoft has Office viewers. I was stuck with the InDesign thing - either go back and ask for a flattened version or subscribe, luckily I had the opportunity to just ignore it.

Like freedom, free software truly isn't free - at least not as long as people need to eat and pay bills. Renewable energy and homesteading may be the zero-cash way, but then we won't have enough time to code!

Maybe we need to come up with some "business productive" games. People-powered OCR Hangman?

DJames1 said:

I think everybody is struggling to find ways to make money from this technology. Google doesn't make any money on the hardware...

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Do we really know that?

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...tions-despite-strong-nexus-5-chromecast-sales

Biggest seller or a best seller in Q4 2013, depending how you take that article.

The packaging probably costs nearly as much as the product.

True, when it's easy for lots of people to make apps, the market gets crowded and confused.
Doesn't help that the rating system doesn't take into account that people use ratings maliciously to complain or penalize the developer for things often that are user error or out of the dev's control.

PlexPass gives other things like their cloud thing, but yeah, it is kind of "pay to be in the beta club" but hey, if it works for them, funds their continued development, and people are willing to pay, I don't have to like it, but I can't really criticize them either.
And with the $75 PlexPass lifetime, it's the same cost as a mid-range piece of software.


On Google profits, I'm sure Chromecast sold well, we can see from the lack of rootable units on shelves...
Of course they won't tell us how much they're making (or losing) on each sale. I bet most of the profit was Google Play.

I just doubt that they lost any money at $35 a pop - until the accountants got involved, because their job is to cover that up. Not whining or ranting, just stating a known part of the corporate income game.

EarlyMon said:

I just doubt that they lost any money at $35 a pop - until the accountants got involved, because their job is to cover that up. Not whining or ranting, just stating a known part of the corporate income game.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

True. Especially given the volume they produced at, I'm sure they negotiated some killer discounts with the manufacturers. :good:

bhiga said:

True. Especially given the volume they produced at, I'm sure they negotiated some killer discounts with the manufacturers. :good:

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/7070288

Job's open.

My issue is not with the ads being there, this is a Google device so ads were to be expected be it from Google or someone else. My issue is with it being video ads, my DSL line is shaped during the day and I don't need this hogging the bandwidth preloading videos while I am trying to browse the web. I wish my country would get "first" world in terms of broadband just so this k@k stops bugging me...

/fingers crossed Eureka guys ad-block this .

EarlyMon said:

I just doubt that they lost any money at $35 a pop

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I don't think Google is losing money on the Chromecast hardware, at least not deliberately. But I do think they priced it not to make any money on the hardware.

Think about it:

- Google is not a hardware company. They deliberately try to stay out of the hardware business because they realize that the margins are really low. They make their money on fees and services. They only introduce hardware products as an enabler to get new things started.

- They are undercutting everybody else on price to have the cheapest brand-name media streamer. It's in the same price range as the cheapest Chinese no-name Android TV sticks.

- They introduced the Chromecast with an offer for 3 months free Netflix, which is 2 months more than Netflix normally offers. That's a $16 value for which Google undoubtedly compensated Netflix, although probably at a discounted rate. When Chromecast sales took off the first day, Google canceled that offer immediately, indicating both that they had allocated a limited budget for it, and that the price of the Chromecast would not bear it without losing money.

I'm very confused. So someone created a SDK for developers to include ads on Chromecast apps and people here are upset by this? Please tell me why.

We should keep in mind here, it's not Google inserting ads here, it's Brightcove who is enabling developers to insert video ads compatible with Chromecast. As the title of the linked article says, "Third Party Provides Way For Developers To Add Ads To Chromecast"

I doubt Google will see any of this revenue as Brightcove built this technology using the Cast SDK for their engine.

The key part here, and I could be totally off-base, is that it sounds like a library that a developer would add to their app - essentially using Brightcove's "Cast" function and player. That makes sense since Brightcove has an HTML5 player already in use by sites on the web.

For example, instead of developing my own HTML5 page that Chromecast would go to in order to play a video, I would just trigger the Brightcove "Cast" function, passing it the location and my key/ID. Chromecast would then run the Brightcove player app which plays the video content I chose with inserted ads. The fact that it's being advertised as "seamless" tells me the ads are being stitched into the video content and delivered as a single stream, rather than a playlist drawing from separate sources.

Aside from ad revenue, the huge plus for developers here is that Chromecast-enabled apps wouldn't even need to use the Cast SDK directly, because they're using the Brightcove casting engine. That means the specific Chromecast-enabled app wouldn't need to be on the whitelist or register with Google because it's really the Brightcove app that Chromecast is running. Brightcove is responsible for making sure the engine keeps up with Chromecast updates and changes so that's another burden off the developer.

A "no ads" version of an app that uses the Brightcove player may use the same request to Brightcove, just with a flag saying not to insert the ads. The "gotcha" here is that because Brightcove is the player for the video content the app uses, blocking Brightcove or the Brightcove app would block all casted video from the app.

Of course Brightcove probably shares in the ad revenue, so maybe they won't allow developers to use their engine without ads, in which case the theorized advantages to the developer go away for a "no ads" version as they'd still need to register and use the Cast SDK directly.
But likely Brightcove may take the gamble that enough people are cheap and use ad-supported versions that it covers the paid apps that aren't showing ads. Or maybe part of their developer agreement makes the developer pay for non-ad versions somehow. Just theorizing from the business perspective...

styckx said:

So sick of in app ads, so sick of freemium, so sick of subscription services (ie: PlexPass etc), so sick of pay to win games, so sick of every Android developer (not every, but you get the point) nickel and diming the piss out of users either with ads or micro-transactions. Enough.. Just follow the PC software model that has worked for decades. A set price, minor upgrades are free, major revisions you re-pay. The Android software market is the biggest racket.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Thank you Sir, these are true words. I agree you to 100%

styckx said:

Just follow the PC software model that has worked for decades.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

The PC software model had very few ongoing costs. You boxed up a CD and after that, the costs you incurred were mostly just support costs. Streaming video is not cheap. If you plan on charging once in a lifetime, then you will be out of business very quickly.

@DJames1 - those are good points, I'd like to counter with what the market will bear.

After the Google TV and Nexus Q flops, I don't think that Chromecast could have done better at a higher price point, even if it started out with more apps and features. I think that they had to plan for this price point and knew that going in.

As for the initial Netflix deal, I don't know if anyone besides the accountants know how that worked. Not a personal criticism, just saying - Netflix has a vested interest in DIAL succeeding. It makes secure delivery easy for them. Their revenue models for this sort of thing aren't trivial, see Roku's license deal for example.

Netflix will give newcomers a free month for watching Philip DeFranco on YouTube.

So between their giveaway budget for promotions, surely compensated in part by the content providers and anything paid back by Google in the form of free advertising, I think that entire initial allocation for Netflix with Google was all virtual money, if such a thing exists. Iow, lots of return on investment on both sides but actual investment costs in real dollars - closer to zero.


@bhiga - agree. This reminds me of the AirPush SDK, and quite a few others who seek out devs with revenue schemes.