Too much to read
"The premise here is that at some stage a user has ultimately been made enough aware of all the possible alternatives available to them so that at that point any consequences from any further advertising techniques can only serve to do no more than produce an irritate that can only lead to the one possible outcome of which would be the eventual loss of the customer."
Since avast is not a 501c3 Corp. Its primary responsibility to it's investors is to earn revenue.
You may not like the ads so simply ignore them, that's what I do. I use Avast because to me it offers excellent protection
and options. As long as that doesn't change, the rest, at this point, is still easily overlooked.
Your summation of my premise is close enough, thank you for posting this quoted overview of my premise so succinctly.
I think we can reasonably agree that at some point even the most uninformed users will be fully aware of what their alternatives might be in regards to paid options available to them. So we should be able to then agree that any further reminders do very little if anything toward convincing these users to pursue alternative options thus at the point their exists not further opportunity to provide additional meaningful information about any alternative options that are available to them in the way of ads. As of that point the upside for these users in regards to procuring paid customers is virtually non-existent and the only result remaining is that it could be a potential irritant to those who's proclivities are inimical to ads in the first place.
So now the question is whether my premise is accurate?
I'm assuming that at some level we can all agree that the premise is accurate to some degree and as to what extent it is accurate is not nearly as critical as the fact that no matter what business model is used it remains true that there is virtually no advantage for any company losing even just one customer. And if an approach can be established that generates as much revenue as possible and at the same time maintains customer retention at an optimum level as well regardless of current revenue flow then this approach would surely be the best to take.
Can we all agree on that?
If we can all agree on the above premise then the question remains, why lose those customers based on an ill-conceived marketing approach? Keeping in mind those customers will still supply a potential revenue stream through "word of mouth" because of the fact they are content customer regardless of whether they produce a direct revenue stream. I would add that these customers may very be more inclined to acquire a paid version of Avast at which time the reasons they did not before no longer exist. For example, perhaps at a later time they are better able to afford to pay, or perhaps they purchase a more expensive computer or perhaps they have more vital records all of which they may as a result be more inclined to purchase paid options at that time.
So what Avast loses by discounting those who leave because of the "ad irritant factor" not only the advantage of positive "word of mouth" but at some point a direct revenue generator if and when they may at some point be more inclined to buy. All of these factor represent the potential for "future growth" that is discarded by not taking the approach I've outlined as an alternative to the direction Avast is currently on now.
What I suggest would not only provide potential revenue from the "newer" customers by if need be keeping the method of advertising as it current stands now and at the same time REWARD the longer-term users who for whatever reason as of that time have clearly elected to stay with the FREE version for the time being. Hence you have the same potential revenue stream for "newer" users and at the same time retain the older users and along with the retain their potential revenue stream at some point in the future as opposed to losing them altogether to a competitor. Why discard a larger number of users providing the advantages of "word of mouth" as a result of a larger number of satisfied customers regardless whether revenue is currently generated from this group.
WHAT I'M PROPOSING IS A WIN / WIN SITUATION as opposed to a part win and part lose situation.
The fact is what I am offering DOES HAVE TO DO WITH THE GENERATION OF REVENUE that you suggest is the primary goal of a business concern including of course Avast.
So in conclusion to my message to Avast: What I've purposed as previously posted should be something that every user would be able to reasonably support not only because this path produces an optimum number of satisfied users but it also intuitively produces an inherent optimum revenue stream as well as a result of the very nature of this alternative plan.
Again a WIN / WIN SITUATION!!!!
One other point as to your comment regarding your point that the "primary responsibility to it's investors is to earn revenue". Yes this would be unconditionally true for a publicly traded company. But the fact is Avast is NOT a publicly traded company so it is actually the prerogative of the private owner(s) as to the degree of revenue stream that is produces in contrast to whatever other factors the private ownership might consider important as well. That said, if your referring to private investors then you do have a valid point to some extent i.e. Summit Partners for example. So to the extent that private investors have a say in the companies guidelines used to run the business you are correct, but that is a much more restrained and limited influence than would be the case with publicly held shares of a company as you probably know. So the fact that the company is still not publicly traded and thus remains in private hands there is as I've pointed out a much greater self-prescribed lead-way as far as the manner in which the company is run in regards to a concern involving profit margins and revenue stream. So your premise for Avast is not entirely accurate in that the private ownership could very well place a degree of value to whatever extent they are inclined to do so on aspects of what the company provides the public in services beyond that of purely just taking into account revenue stream. I would suggest to you that this has to some extent been the case with Avast going back in time as far as focusing possibly more on "services rendered" as contrasted to the bottom line on a financial sheet but has admittedly morphed into having much more focus on the profit margins and revenue stream in recent years and I would suggest for reasons I'll touch on later of which may be of interest to some. And again management goals are much more so the prerogative of a privately owned company so there's no inherent problem with whatever approach a privately held company elects to take from the business end so to what extent we as customers want to consider what is important may or may not happen to contrast to that of what the goals might be of a privately held company, point being the privately help companies goals can vary to a much larger degree than a publicly owned company and in that sense agreement is much more possible with the possible range of goals that customers might tend to have. All that said, it is my understanding and interesting to note that Avast had actually considered going public at some point in the past. That is on December 20, 2011 Avast Software filed for an IPO of the company with the SEC for an initial offering of $200 million in common shares. This was later revised to a much more specific IPO offer of the company at some point in early 2012 (perhaps January) to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol AVST.US (if I recall correctly) with a then agreed upon initial share price established at between $9.00 and $11.00 offering 9,000,000 initially with the intention of generating an offer amount of $113,850,000.00 and there was to be 84,600,000 share outstanding with a lockup period of 180 days. But as it turned out Avast ultimately withdrew the IPO offer as of 7/25/2012 thus abandoning their plans to go public for whatever reason. I'm not privy to the reasons these plans were abandoned but the fact that going public did not come to fruition leaves us with a privately held company that has total prerogative to the methods used to run the company either in financial terms or any other terms for that matter. (for the sake of full disclosure I can provide resources for most of what I've posted here, however some of this is solely from memory and may not be able to be reproduced by me, nevertheless probably can be by others with similar knowledge). I bring this up to provide a backdrop as to why I feel Avast is going in the direction it currently is, point being I feel Avast in the past had placed more importance in providing unfettered protection to users regardless of the ability to produce revenue as opposed to the position the company holds today. It all comes down to where priorities are placed and I feel that an ultimate goal for this company is to eventually go public hence the focus has been growing more pronounced in the area of revenue generation. Of course as I've said repeatedly my opinion disagrees with the method used to produce the current desired goals but that as already been covered ad nauseum so I won't go there again as anyone reading my posts know where I stand on this specific topic. All of this is simply to explain why I feel Avast is adopting the current approach the company has been taking in recent years. In my view a lot of this new business approach has to do with the CEO of the Avast Software Company in the name of Mr. Vincent Steckler who has been at the helm of Avast Software B.V since 2009. It is my personal opinion that Vincent Steckler still continues to have an overriding desire to definitely go public with the company at some point and because of this we have the increasingly much greater focus on the profit/loss and revenue stream aspects of the company as contrasted to years prior to when he took over as CEO of the current Avast Software company. It is also totally public record that ten years before Vincent Steckler became the CEO of Avast he had been directly involved in a lawsuit filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission for adding and abetting in both concealment and intentional fraudulent activity while he was employed as an executive at Legato Systems, Inc, which as I said occurred approximately 10 years before to when he took the helm at Avast. For the record, Legato Systems was a privately held company at that time in the business of computer storage for the most part that has since been taken over by EMC (a stock I have extensive interests in) in around 2003, about 5 years after Legato Systems was embroiled along with Steckler in the civil suite mentioned here. Steckler was alleged to be specifically involved in issuing false and misleading financial statements in its quarterly report filed with the Commission that was in turn provided to the investing public at that time back in around 1999. For purposed of full disclosure, over 5 years later the case drew to a close in late 2005 as a final judgment in the case ultimately imposed a $35,000 civil monetary penalty ruling against Steckler, to which Steckler consented without admitting or denying the allegations in the Commission’s complaint. We can only speculate as to the any goals there may or may have not been in regards to the privately held company Legato Systems going public hence doing so entirely based on conjecture therefore of little empirical value, but is something people can consider to the extent they may feel relevance exists in this regard. I do not bring any of this up to deride anyone including in particular Steckler, but the fact remains all of this is a matter of public record and is available to anyone who seeks the information for themselves. My point is that from my perspective these kinds of typically aggressive business practices reflect upon the manner in which the direction Avast has now been taken in recent years. Be it wise practices or not the fact remains that the goals of Avast have changed in recent years and I contend these changes have originated from the time Vincent Steckler has taken over as CEO of Avast. All of this said some of which is clearly personal opinion on my part, we can certainly agree to attribute nothing other than purely good intentions in regards to the path now taken by the management of Avast as far as improving the companies standing in the technology sector that their business comprises. But again, "good intentions" do not necessarily translate to correct intentions as to achieving the current goals prescribed by the current management. I still contend that a more flexible and more tolerant path can in fact actually act in a way to improve the opportunity and chances of attaining the prescribed goals discussed here as reflected in the alternatives I've prescribed myself that are in my view a better approach than the current one being devised by the present management in charge of Avast. If the ultimate goal of bringing in a larger revenue stream together with greater profit margins can be achieved equally or perhaps even more so using my approach then there is no reason on earth not to consider adopting this alternative approach I'm suggesting will do exactly that. I contend that the goal to produce increased revenue streams and better profit margins can be and would be produced by adopting the approach that inherently provides increased customer retention that in turn inherently contributes to the ultimate goal I think exists for the company to eventually go public assuming of course this is still a goal and in turn is the likely impetus behind the changes we've observed in the recent management of Avast. Of course some of what I've discussed remains well within the realm of conjecture on my part, but it is anchored in the actual recent decisions made by management of Avast for now the past 7 years going back to 2009 when an IPO was initially planned but later abandoned. It doesn't take much creative thought to conclude that this goal still exists and as such clearly reflects the changes we've we see as customers of Avast during these past few years.
I know there is a lot to read and will be ignored by most if not all, but my opinions are there for anyone who's interested. The ability to express our opinions is anchored solidly in our freedom of speech and expression we all hold so dearly and as such I personally value greatly as I'm sure all do as well. I have not ill-intent of any kind other than to express my personal views and I can assure all who may think my intentions are something other than what is best for Avast as a "loyal" customer for so many years all I can say is that I assure you to reach any other conclusion is wrong. I have been highly and actively recommending Avast to family/friends as well as computer classmates and instructors as well every opportunity I've had ever since I returned to college to start my second career in computer science after 15 years in psychology as a counselor prior to that. So I am certain that I have turned people in the direction of Avast going way back to the very early years of Avast at at time when Avast was virtually unknown by Information Science students and instructors alike. It was my experience that most if not all never heard of Avast back then and as such instructors were recommending other AV programs at the time. I not only made the instructors aware of Avast but the entire department back then and I know that at some point I was able to actually turn many instructors in the direction of Avast and away from the AV programs they were recommending at the time. So between family and friends as well as extensive contact with large numbers of Computer Science students and instructors I'm certain I influenced literally many hundreds of people to go with Avast through the years.
My issue now is that so many of my friends and family and of others as well are now increasingly complaining to me regarding the direction Avast has gone in their advertising methods. I'm increasingly becoming frustrated by this and as such can basically no longer unconditionally recommend Avast to others but rather will to be "fair" disclose the current practices so that potential customers of Avast are aware beforehand and in so doing I won't have to worry about the backlash with any new converts to Avast that I may be recommending because I do now offer alternatives that do not use these same methods of advertising in all fairness to potential new users. I don't like doing this, but feel it's only right under the circumstances. And I would add that the day Avast so chooses to take a more moderate approach to their advertising methods I'll be happy to not only abandon any thoughts of going elsewhere myself but will be more than pleased to return to my recommending Avast in more enthusiastically as I had in past years before the direction Avast has been going. So I'm certainly NOT a protagonist against Avast in any way but rather would like to see Avast redirect themselves in a manner in which I firmly believe will in the end be in their best interest. What is best for Avast is mutually best for all of us users of Avast and should clearly be the goals we all want for Avast.