Deal with devil: free TV with ads

Would you sign up for the catch?

(Thank you SmugMug for supporting the newsletter!)

We’ve had a pretty simple arrangement with our TV viewing since the 1950s. Buy a TV and (at least originally) all the shows are provided for free, in exchange for living with advertising.

So my ears perked up about this latest twist: how about a free TV to go along with the ad support?

A new tech start-up, Telly, promises to give people big, beautiful 55-inch flat screen TVs, with a catch. There’s an ad-supported ticker in the soundbar, showing you ads, sports and stock scores. And capturing every little detail about your viewing habits, zip code, car choices and the like.

“Telly will be the first TV paid for by advertisers, not you,” says the company, which comes from the co-founder of PlutoTV, the ad-supported streaming service owned by Paramount Global.

Does this sound worth $400 to you? (That’s the average price these days of a decent flat screen.)

My first impulse is to say yes, my second is, wait a minute—my info is worth a lot more than $400.

But I like the idea. And I think it has legs.

Think of streaming, and how it started out as a way to watch TV on demand without those loud, obnoxious ads that ruined our viewing experience. We’d just have to pay for the privilege.

Cut to today, and now Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock and Hulu all have added cheaper monthly options with ads. And people are paying for them! They don’t mind. They’ll endure the pain of ads in exchange for lower monthly fees.

Spotify became the no. 1 music service globally with its brilliant idea: free music, but you have to listen to ads to get it, or pay for an ad-free experience. Spotify has over 500 million users, with 317 million taking the free version, and 210 million opting for premium.

Ads aren’t going anywhere!

I want everyone to pay for my stuff, like the Telly deal, in exchange for ads, OK?

Free Phones

I never understood why Google didn’t go for market share and really take on the iPhone by giving away free, ad-supported mobile phones. With the Pixel, the company could have been a real contender, instead of an also ran, and garnered at least 1 billion users. (Apple has 2 billion.)

Google has a paltry 2% of the phone market, despite getting rave reviews for its phones, owning the world’s most popular search engine, Google Search and most popular direction services, Google Maps and Waze. Imagine if you couldn’t operate them without being told you had to have a Pixel first?

And that your entry-level Pixel would be free?

Apple has over 50% market share, to about 25% for Samsung.

Car Wrapping

I’m currently car shopping, and shocked at the costs. What was $12,000 a decade ago is now $20,000, and many of the cars I’m interested in are $45,000 and up.

For a car!

Please sign me up for one of those cars I can drive around, in exchange for being a billboard on wheels. I don’t care about what people think of my car, I just want to save money.

I looked into it this week, and there are apparently 5 companies that will give you gig worker bucks for doing just that. So okay, it’s not such a great deal. Now.

You’re looking at around $50-$100 month, maybe a little more, and a yearly take of $1,000 to $3,000 if you drive a lot. But at least it’s a step in the right direction.

The basic gist is you have to drive a late model car, spend hours on the road, agree to blurb the firm on your vehicle, and drive in upscale neighborhoods.

More on how to make money this way, from Money magazine.

Three of the top Car Wrapping firms are Wrapify, Nickelytics and Carvertise.

Does this type of advertising work? Put it this way—my friend, the photographer Ginger DiNunzio advertises her photo services, not other companies, on her Nissan Leaf, and she tells me it’s been the most effective marketing she’s ever done. “You’re the photographer with the car,” they tell her. They remember her.

PhotowalksTV car, here we come

Ginger DiNunzio’s Sandprints Photography car in Morro Bay, California

Other news of the week:

ChatGPT now has a smartphone app. This is a big deal since several weeks ago I told you about all these scam ChatGPT apps that were all over the App Stores, trying to get you to pay big bucks via subscription for something that’s currently free.

Be sure to get the official app.

AI, if you’ve been living under a rock, is the hot buzzword for 2023, using conversational search to find results, with limits. When it works, it’s fantastic, but it’s still woefully wrong often and by scouring the internet for answers, is spouting bland crap we could live without.

For instance, I learned this week that I wrote a companion to my 2012 “Video Nation” book called “Photo Nation: The Ultimate Online Guide to Taking Great Pictures.” Great idea, but not so. I asked ChatGPT to go ahead and write it for me.

That it couldn’t do, but it did spit out a 7 chapter by chapter outline in less than a second that on first glance read incredibly well, but on further inspection, was just pablam.

“I've already READ that book...many times, as a matter of fact!!” one of my Facebook friends noted. The writing was so bad, “this proves to me that WE as PEOPLE will never be replaced by AI!!!”

Let’s hope.

(P.S. Apple this week banned employees from using ChatGPT for work.)

SmugMug

Friendly reminder that I use the SmugMug website to automatically backup my photos, with rates and terms (unlimited storage) that are more favorable than Apple, Amazon or Google, showcase my online portfolio without having the resolution lowered (check out my Hollywood Sign gallery) and sell prints. SmugMug has a free two-week trial available at http://www.smugmug.com

ICYMI: Hollywood Sign

Please join me on a rare Photowalk to the Hollywood Sign, behind the gate and up close with those big nine letters!

As always, thanks for watching, reading and listening. If you enjoy the Hollywood Sign video, please do me a favor and leave a comment. This helps YouTube know that people are enjoying it, and perhaps inspire it to show it to more people. Like, share, yadda yadda and I’ll put on another rope for you on another steep hill. I promise!

Have a great week!

Jeff