I’d like to start things off by saying that I’m not a big fan of ads. They typically get in the way of the content I’m trying to consume. That being said, I run a technology blog that relied of ads to generate revenue to pay my bills and the other writers who contribute to the site.
If you own an HTC One M9 or HTC One M8, you may have noticed an “ad” pop up as a notification on your phone a few days back. One of HTC’s content partners created a new theme to promote the upcoming Fantastic Four movie and HTC pushed it out as a notification to the HTC One M9 and HTC One M8.
When I saw the notification, I was intrigued. HTC had informed us that it was planning to feature sponsored content within BlinkFeed, Themes and its Recommended Apps folder eventually. The notification was clearly labeled as a new theme which could be downloaded from the Themes app, but it did feature a large banner image promoting the August 7th theatrical release of Fantastic Four (a movie I’m planning to watch). I clicked the notification, downloaded the new theme and applied it to my phone. Since I’m not a HUGE Fantastic Four fan, I changed the theme for the following morning and went about my day.
A few hours later, the world was ending! Every technology site on the web was writing about HTC’s new ad notifications, painting HTC as an evil villain. Really? The articles claimed HTC’s sponsored notification was “despicable,” “disgusting,” “poor taste,” and “money hungry,” – upsetting ALL HTC One M9 owners.
After the dust had settled, I asked our social media followers if they had been upset by the Fantastic Four notification. The overwhelming response was “no.” Most people who answered our questions said that they even clicked on the notification to check out the new theme. A few even claimed that the notification was a good thing since they had never even opened the Themes app on their phone. It’s funny how things get blown out of proportion simply because technology journalists want to write a story that they know will generate a lot of traffic.
Personally, I don’t want to be bombarded by ads on my phone, but HTC’s tact didn’t bother me in the least. I honestly hope that HTC can find more content partners to develop more themes for it platform, making it even more appealing to the consumer.
What’s you’re take on HTC’s sponsored notification scandal?
A necessary evil. I didn’t realize it was a big deal until the day after I had dismissed the notification. I tried to determine where it came from (looked like a theme), and remembered having received other “theme” notifications. I figured it couldn’t be dismissed without disabling some of the features of Sense Home that I like.
I agree HTC has lacked a bit of common sense about this, such as when they announced that they putting ads into Blinkfeed and said that they would provide a way to disable them “later.” That engendered quite a bit of hostility in their Elevate community, even though ultimately the update enabling ads actually included the ability to disable those ads when it came out.
Sometimes I’m not sure the marketing people at HTC ever actually talk to each other.
I’ve made several themes for htc and followed several people on htc themes including htc. I usually get a new theme notification whenever a person I’m following publishes a new theme. So when htc pushed a new themed, I figured that was it. Didn’t bother me at all. I cleared it and went on with my day. Regardless I get over a 100 notification a day.
I personally didn’t get the theme and have put it down to maybe living outside the US. But if I were to receive it I’d hardly be annoyed, for one I get several notifications from the themes app from someone I follow and from there have downloaded several themes.
I think the whole situation was blown out of proportion because of the recent decision to include ads in BlinkFeed. I have actually found those ads quite useful too, for knowing about things like the UK listing price for a Re Camera and also new games like Angry Birds 2.
It’s fine for HTC to push ads to me if they want to give me my phone for free. Otherwise … NO WAY!!!!
I actually like the theme a lot. Most themes on the HTC Theme app don’t do a good job of reskinning major app icons, so you end up with a few skinned app icons but the rest is still the default app icon, so it looks very incongruous. The Fantastic 4 theme reskins many of the major app icons out there, so it looks a lot better. The background is pretty good, too.
I’ve gotten a few suggested themes that have popped up in my notifications & when I saw this one, my feeling was no different then if I get a notification for a new email. I could care less
Agree. If you ever used Themes which I assume most of these critics haven’t, you would know the logo on the notification and that Themes has a bunch of content created by companies. Marvel, Coca-Cola, whatever… No one complains when apps like Line send you notifications for downloading new Disney stickers.
While I think some sites wrote the article as a cautionary piece, the unified bashing on all android sites for one notification took me by surprise. HTC can’t seem to find a break from all the negative press.