All across the SaaS world companies are afraid to pollute their precious professional grade products with advertising. Ads. This is a mistake.
And, in the consumer services arena, where everything is ad supported, they're afraid to clutter up their products with professional grade functionality.
After all, your users are mostly stupid know nothings who don't really have any serious purpose and couldn't figure out professional grade tools anyway.
No, no! We would never say anything like that about our customers! But, mostly, they are here for entertainment, that's true.
Besides, we do have professional customers, professional users. People use our service for professional communication.
Yes, you have separated your concerns. Some tools are for, like, work, and others are for ... oh, we don't want to say "play" ... for communication. And the two don't mix.
If we wanted to incorporate stuff for working, like CAD, accounting, whatever kind of thing like that, we would have to take all the fun out of our products, and we couldn't do advertising. It's a different kind of business.
All of this is muddled thinking, and it's stupid thinking. For one thing, people generally aren't dumb, they're smart. I tried to make the case earlier that, if you try to make tools for dumb people, you end up making dumb tools. You wouldn't try to build software without using instructions to the computer, but somehow your users are never supposed to use the same power of the computer that makes your work possible. You think they're too dumb to do it. Then, for another thing, your users aren't flighty, they don't think only about fun, they're serious. The only reason you aren't giving the serious tools is, well, your own stupidity.
And, on the other side, professionals, at least, look at ads all day long at work. It's part of the job. Smart B to B SaaS has to incorporate that advertising into the work flow ... and the revenue model. Maybe the smart ones already know that.
Finally, there's this: All across the media world everyone thinks people hate advertising. It's a good ego inflater. Ha! They hate the ads but they're looking at them anyway! Aren't we clever! Well, it's true, people hate advertising, but this other thing is true, too: People love advertising. If you took the ads away, they wouldn't buy the magazines!
Actually, there's a reason people hate advertising, and it's not what you think. In computing, digital media, no one, not one provider, understands this. Implement the solution, and your advertising will take off like a very large rocket.
