I just want to note that please don't take my replies as outrage, or aggressive. I know it's common online so I don't want anyone to think I'm up in arms. I'm just disagreeing. Not that I feel you are. I just would like to say.
Don't worry. To me, your posts don't sound like aggression, to some extend not even disagreement
But let me first clarify something as well. I happen to be an OpenSubtitles admin, but what I am writing here is my
personal opinion and
not a reflection of beliefs or policies or so of OpenSubtitles.
For some films they're creating a world, an experience, to be lost in. When you insert an advert in the middle of it you bring people out of that illusion. The creators of the film never intended for an advert to be there, and so an advert shouldn't be there. It definitely diminishes the film when seen. Even if it's for a moment. That's how minds work. Should I be thinking about existence, in this case, or NordVPN? I can't focus on both. Nor can I quickly memorize the URL for later.
I totally agree. Ads do frustrate the experience of being in the movie and is a violation of the piece of art. But still, that doesn't void my point.
In my ideal world, money would not exist and everybody would work for free. Think about it, never again a financial crisis and no financial institution figuratively imprisoning you. Etc.
In a slightly less ideal world, people would just pay a fair amount for every service or good they use. Advertising wouldn't exist and we would only use what we need. If everybody would pay for using OpenSubtitles, the yearly rate could be a fraction of what it currently costs to be VIP-member (no ads).
However, this world is pretty ****ing far from being ideal. Things cost money and the amount of money people have is limited and usually quite a headache to increase. So, people want things for as cheap as possible or preferably totally free. But they ARE not free. "Free" only means the money needed is coming from somewhere else than from your own pocket. In this case from the advertisers.
Yeah of course. But that's why I was asking if anyone had figures.
I am afraid you are asking in the wrong place. OpenSubtitles is adding the advertisements, but not monitoring the actual affect of it. You should ask NordVPN if they think it's worth the money they are paying. But apparently they think so, since they are doing it
Because to me it doesn't seem very likely that people just sitting down to watch a film, or in the middle of one will pause it to note down the URL provided. So I would like to know exactly how many people are actually visiting it from the link in the subtitles. And if the link in the file is the same as links provided elsewhere it's going to mess up the data. So it seems like they may be reducing the quality of their service while not actually making a marked impact back in revenue.
This is actually a psychological question about how marketing works. I agree, I cannot imagine someone stopping to watch a movie and go check out that URL. But a main part of marketing is getting yourself being known. Not direct results, but long term results. Watching that movie with their ads will not get you to get a subscription at NordVPN that same evening. But if you are kind of brainwashed with the name "NordVPN", the moment you decide you want a VPN, and thinking "hmm, yeah, but which one..." - then you have the answer. Subconsciously you will even think they are a
good VPN provider, because you heard so much about them
That's fair, but I also still think it's fair to criticise the implementation of revenue streams in this manner for the reasons previously mentioned.
True. Feel free to criticize as much as you want
Also I'm currently dirt poor haha.
You can also upload a bunch of subtitles. At 100+ uploads you hardly get any advertising and at 1000+ (I think) it's completely zero. That way even poor people could have an ad-free OpenSubtitles.
So they could also possibly change the message at the beginning of the film to "If you like these subs consider donating for as little as X (sorry haven't done the maths. Not a lot) a month."
I have my doubts about if that would actually work well enough. But it may be a reasonable idea the big boss of OpenSubtitles could think about, if he hasn't already done so.
Last but not least, please note that my task as OpenSubtitles admin is volantarily and
100% unpaid. Yeah, how crazy can one be, eh
So I have no personal interest in the presence of ads and I definitely do not defend awkward ads. All I am doing is giving my opinion about the mechanism of advertising.