How do creators of free apps/websites make money?
In: Technology
If something is free, you are the product.
Selling ads spaces in their apps/websites or using your informations.
There are some genuinely free products and sites that this explanation does not cover but it applies to most.
Just like the ads on televisions and radios around the world pay for your attention via advertising revenue. The apps, and websites place people in a space where companies can place advertisements in front of you.
Next time you are using a desktop and you are on Facebook, stop and look at the page, not the content that you are interested in but the whole page.
Some of the content in your feed is paid advertisements. The margins are also filled with advertisements.
The phenomenon of satire news is funded by advertisements too. You might have heard of click bait. It is advertising that is outrageous enough to get you to click on it to see more. Those clicks are monitored and the more clicks the more views to the ads on the site that placed the click bait. So those sites get paid more money for the incredible exposure to the ads on their site.
Coupling all this together is information gathering about what ads you click on, what products you bought online or searched for. The algorithm then customized your ads to get more clicks out of you to generate more revenue for the advertisers.
Imagine that you are a conspiracy theory believer, then advertising click bait to you about the “deep state,” is going to be more effective than advertising to you with stuff about hearing aids.
One of the valid criticisms of our internet usage is, that rather than democratization of information, which is what was hoped for, we are actually creating information isolation where your worse information bias gets confirmed to make you click on the ads!
This is the way in which a person might become radicalized, what started out as a genuine search for information becomes a nest of progressive more compelling stories and narrative whose real objective was to make money, has been corrupted for ideological purposes.
Most likely they are either selling ad space in their app, companies pay for the advertisement, or they collect data about you and sell it on to companies that use it for marketing. As an example, you play a game on your phone, all of a sudden you start seeing ads about similar games here and there. Or you are using a shopping app to look for baby clothes, all of a sudden a lot of sites are showing you baby-related products.
There are other reasons companies might want data on your shopping habits or what products you enjoy, for instance marketers might use it to gain insight into who the demographic is using a particular service or product in order to tailor a product more towards that group to get an edge over the competition.
Remember: if you are using something for free, you are probably the product.
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