Internet, the world of free advertising placement

Free Advertising Network in the 21st Century

Merchants give away one product for free through some means, with the aim of selling another product. This powerful sales technique developed in the 20th century and was widely adopted. The most famous examples include Jell-O giving out free recipe booklets and Gillette giving away free razor handles. Starting from these business model experiments in the early 20th century, "free" gradually sparked a consumer revolution and determined the direction of commerce for hundreds of years to come. Free radio and television programs connected every corner of the country and created a mass market. "Free" became the slogan of modern marketers, and consumers responded positively to this slogan.

Entering the 21st century, we are creating a new type of "free" model. This new "free" is not a trick of taking from one pocket and putting into another, but rather a new superior ability to reduce the cost of goods and services to zero. The "free" of the 20th century was a marketing tactic, while in the 21st century, it has become an entirely new economic model.

The economy of the 20th century was mainly an atomic economy, whereas the economy of the 21st century is a byte economy. If something becomes software based on computer bytes, its cost and price will inevitably tend towards zero. In an atomic economy, any free offering requires payment in another form, which is why many traditional "free" offerings appear to be bait. However, in a byte economy, true free exists, and the bill can really be written off. The free in an atomic economy raises suspicions, while the free advertising in a byte economy is seen as trustworthy.

In an atomic economy, over time, the items around us gradually increase in value. But in the network world of a byte economy, items become cheaper and cheaper.

The rise of free economics is driven by technological progress in the digital age. As Moore's Law points out, the price of computer processors drops by half every two years on average, and the prices of network bandwidth and storage decrease even faster. The role of the Internet is to integrate the three, accelerating the trend of price reduction, causing online networks to depreciate at nearly 50% per year. That is, the cost of playing a video on the YouTube website this year will be halved next year. The cost trend of online businesses is similar, also approaching zero. No wonder the prices of online goods have continued to fall.

There are times when you need to pay (positive price) and times when you don't need to pay (zero price), but sometimes there is a third price that we cannot ignore: merchants give you money. I'm not joking; this negative price indeed exists. You use a merchant's product or service, and they pay you instead of you paying them.

You might think this phenomenon is not common, but in fact, you often encounter it in daily life. Microsoft pays you to use its search engine, revealing the development trend of negative prices. Actually, the phenomenon of negative prices has a long history in traditional marketing, such as current discounts, cashback on purchases, cash rewards, airline mileage points, and other rewards for using credit cards or consuming.

Of course, in the aforementioned advertising release scenarios, there are rarely true negative prices, and sooner or later, you will open your wallet. In these situations, although this money or points are not free, consumers often perceive them as falling from the sky.