Why does every app have ads?

Just the other day I was complaining to a friend, as one often does, about the absurd number of ads on every platform. And her solution to this problem was to just pay for the premium version. 

At the risk of sounding like Mr Krabs, it is ridiculous that we charge up our cards with all these payments for services we don’t even get to own but only subscribe to. 

For some industries, I can see why this might be the case but it is not required across the board. Using Netflix & Spotify as my prime examples because those are the only recurring services currently charged on my card. 

I am also aware that sounding nostalgic about the past can be perceived as tone deaf but I, for one, would like to actually own these movies, for example, in a more permanent form that only be allowed to stream them. When I was growing up, we had cassettes and DvD players were you could pay a small fee to ‘buy’ a movie and then it would be yours until you’ve replayed it so many times it started to wear out. 

The same goes for music, we used to be able to download music and keep them permanently to soothe as many listens as we would like instead now it depends on how strong our internet connection is and if we of course subscribed. 

In a capitalist economy, I’m no stranger to the aim of most corporations is profit maximization but to what extent? 

I haven’t opened tiktok in a while and to my surprise when I did there were now ads. Not the sponsored content #partner from influencers that we knew not to trust but ads from organizations similar to the ones on youtube, I was disheartened. 

Where does it end? 

Games have ads, Search engines have ads, even bible apps have ads… isn’t that outrageous?! 

At every possible turn we are always being marketed something or offered to pay for exclusivity to avoid those ads. In the end it falls short because rather than being motivated to buy the product marketed to us we are more conscious of the invasion of privacy and marketing tactic at play as that’s all the turn off we need. 

With every industry rapidly changing to a subscription based model who is to say we would one day not be charged for premium air?