Ray Ozzie has been pushing his agenda at Microsoft, one of his suggestions being that Microsoft should pursue more of an advertisement-supported revenue model (Google is doing it, so everyone should. Right?). Apparently some at Microsoft are buying this line, which is incredibly sad: Microsoft has been one of the few remaining customer-focused technology companies out there.

Advertisement supported content is wrong on so many levels.

First is the fact that you're still paying for it (unless you're a hermit. I wrote about this in regards to content on the web about 4 years ago), but instead of directly paying fair value, you're indirectly paying far more through countless middlemen and vested interests, grossly inflating the actual cost.

Whether it's sneakers that are made by a company that spends twice the amount on marketing than they spend on their products, or cars that have thousands of dollars hidden in the price to sponsor the next outing of Survivor: Advertising costs to support supposedly-free content are coming from someone, and that someone is you.

Of course, some awareness campaigns are necessary to educate the public about the advantages of certain products, yet as a consumer there is tremendous danger in utilizing advertisements to make purchasing choices. For instance, we often hear about how advantageous Google ads are because they're context specific (e.g. "They're good because they're actually useful to me! I'm looking for X, and what do you know - Google is showing me an ad about X!"), but really they're terrible: They aren't placed based upon merit and applicability for your purpose, but rather based upon how much they paid to appear there. If you buy a product, or even give it more attention than its competitors, because it "conveniently" appeared in a Google ad, you're buying based upon nothing more than the marketing budget of the source company - It may be the absolute worst product in its genre, but it got a little namespace in your head because of an advertising budget. This sort of market supports the continuation and success of mediocrity, where marketing trumps merit.

In an era of instant communications and endless online resources and communities to learn about products and solutions, obviously biased advertisements shouldn't be a credible source of purchasing information.

Second is the fact that when something (a magazine, a newspaper, a television program, a website) is substantially funded by advertisements, it answers to a different master. An obvious example would be the network television channels (e.g. NBC, CBS, ABC). These networks have been spitting out the same middle-of-the-road tripe for years, building their programs around ample opportunities for product placements, and for content so inoffensive that their break-away sponsors won't demand changes. Their programs are made for their sponsors as much as they're made for their audience, which is why you see the terrible challenges on shows like the Apprentice, with each episode featuring 15 minutes of overt commercials to pound home the message of the other 44 minutes of covert commercials. Contrast this with some of the innovative, award-winning programming that have come from the subscriber-sponsored channels like HBO (where the viewer really is the master). Compare the incredible documentaries of PBS to the latest pander-to-the-sponsors regurgitation of the same sitcom script that has been playing for decades that you see on "the networks". In the print medium, how likely is it that the newspaper or the magazine are going to slam a dud product from their primary sponsors?

Thirdly, haven't we been through this during the first .COM bubble? Did no one learn? Really - does no one remember?

During that bubble it seemed that every business model was based upon advertisement supported content (even "free" PCs if you subjected yourself to continuous advertisements), until the final, ridiculous climax when there were software products that actually outright paid you (or at least your macro-engine) to "watch" advertisements. Of course we know how that turned out, but here we go again.