Include option to show ads to support the creators

[ploar-bear]

I am in love with Bonjourr for some time now and would like to support the creators. I know there is a donation option but every time I open a new tab in my browser and remember about donating, I'm also very busy and never get to it.

My ideia would be to add an option in configurations to enable "show non-intrusive ads to support the creators", and include a little banner like ad on the bottom of the page, or maybe choose where in the page. This would be the users choice, and maybe users like me would be cool with it and also help the devs.

[Gitoffthelawn]

I frequently contribute to software projects financially or through detailed bug reports, documentation, testing, translation, or other means.

I think the idea here is kindhearted, thoughtful, and with good intention. On the other hand, I would be very hesitant to continue to use Bonjourr (I love it as well!) if it included code to contact ad servers.

If the code was exceptionally lightweight and never possibly executed unless the toggle was thrown, I might be a tiny bit less hesitant. But generally, for me, ads in software represent a deal-breaker. The exception is when developers include a request for donation on their web site, and perhaps also within their software's settings page, help page, or "About" dialog box. That's exactly what our good Bonjourr developers do, and that's totally fine by me.

Of course, this is simply my criteria for selecting software, and I totally respect that @ploar-bear has a different criteria. I don't think either one of us is right or wrong... we simply have different criteria for choosing which software we use. ❤️

[morceaudebois]

What an unusual request! This isn't something we've had ever considered before, but it definitely is an interesting idea to explore.

To do this properly, we wouldn't want to use Google Ads as they're notoriously bad in the privacy department. There are other ad network services that don't track their user data as much (EthicalAds seems to be the main one), but I'd guess the trade off would be lower revenues as they'd have less data to sell to advertisers. I actually think this is a fair trade off, but we're not off to a great start.

We don't actually have stats on this, but what I can tell after working on this project for a few years is that most people barely open the settings menu, so most wouldn't even know that the option is there. People who open the settings menu tend to be power users who care more about what appears on their page and would naturally tolerate ads a lot less. What I mean is that the option would be shown to the wrong crowd, which leads me to believe that it would need to be the other way around: on by default and disablable if wanted.

We already know (as proven by the thousands of ad supported services on the Internet) that most people are fine with ads if they like a service. I think this is the only way it would actually generate revenue, because ads need to be seen and clicked on thousands of times to even generate anything. As lovely as the intention would be from the few power users who'd enable it, I don't think it would be enough to generate more than a few cents every month.

Having built-in ads (whether they're enabled by default or not) also poses issues from our brand image point of view. Just like you @Gitoffthelawn, I do my best to avoid any software that has ads in it. If I see something that advertises itself as "privacy focused" but has ads in it, I would never take it seriously and immediately go look somewhere else. Of course only power users who actually think about that stuff will care, but as an active minority, they play a huge role in how the world sees us.

Another more simple thing is that we make Bonjourr because we like cool stuff. And ads are pretty uncool from our point of view. Of course in a perfect world we'd make more money from it, and maybe as more users discover it we'll get to it, but we're fine having it stay how it currently is. Even if you were to never donate @ploar-bear, we're happy to provide cool stuff for you to enjoy! Thanks a lot for the love and the consideration :)

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, I'm done rambling 😇

[Gitoffthelawn]

@ploar-bear Another way to support Bonjourr and its wonderful developers is to recommend Bonjourr to your friends, colleagues, and if you happen to love your family, them too!