Monzo intend to continue the trend of being transparant. Maybe this wasn’t got right in the very limited test but from what I’ve heard, the idea is to say “You can save £200 by switching to Providor X, we’ll take £25 from them as a comission from them if you switch. You’re welcome to switch directly which means we don’t make the comission”.
I think that’s fair enough? I wouldn’t like my feed to be filled with ads but, if I can save money on my electricity bill in a one click solution, I’d kinda like to know!
There’s quite a few different angles to approach this.
Firstly, on targeting and all that. I think a lot of people seem to forget this isn’t a human being reading all your purchases and making recommendations. It’s purely algorithms. If you are scared of your data being analysed, I would suggest cancelling your bank account regardless of bank and using cash; because every business out their does it already even if you don’t already know that. All your data is crunched, credit risks run, analysed, submitted to third party credit agencies the lot.
Ironically so far, Monzo hasnt notified any of the big three Credit Agencies about my account; but no doubt long term that will change.
However at the same time, putting adverts into a news feed seems a bit extreme. That’s no different to Natwest on your Itemised Statement suddenly putting ‘2 for 1 bananas only at Tesco’ in as a line in the middle of the statement. Seriously Monzo, reconsider this big time. Do what like Clearscore and the others do where if you want to make money off a free service by using recommendations do it in a separate tab which the user specifically has to go to.
I get Monzo needs to find ways to fund itself. The long term banks all offer free banking for the purpose of down the line selling the big money makers like Loans or Mortgage. Just look at Natwest, gets you in at a young age with a really good student account and hopes you stay loyal long enough that eventually you purchase a mortgage which is 70% of their profits.
The rest is things like overdrafts etc.
Now if a user never takes an overdraft, providing them with bank cards, transaction fees and the lot is going to cost with no real return. I get that. But I would seriously consider if there’s not other ways you can make it profitable. Be it making a small account fee per year for the service.
Just my view; but the concept of having my newsfeed on my bank account turning into Facebook covered with ads just makes me horrified. If that really is the long term goal; maybe the Traditional Banks are the answer; you also (sometimes) get branches as a plus and an ad free bank statement. Mobile Apps for some of them really is catching up with Monzo to.
I have zero interest in seeing ads in my transaction feed. If you must put them in an offers tab and/or make it optional. I’d rather pay an account fee. And whether extreme or not if ads, however well intentioned or tailored, become a default thing in the transaction feed I’m not going to use Monzo.
I think it’s a question of balance. I hate Facebook and Twitter because they literally bombard you with multiple adverts daily between your notifications and there is no real way of turning them off. On the other hand if Monzo were to put a couple of targeted notifications in my feed every month in exchange for free banking I’d be happy. The great service they provide needs to be paid for somehow.
Don’t forget that this was a test. The aim of Monzo is to save you money. If they think you can save money by switching your energy to Bulb then I want them to alert me.
I think it’s generally agreed that appearing in the feed wasn’t ideal but…
I thought this, it was sent to less than a hundred people, the beta is meant to test ideas the team have to a small group of users. When I first saw the thread the way it was carrying on I thought Monzo had been selling data/ invaded privacy/ leaked information. Suddenly springing it on users may not have been a great idea but it was the easiest way at this juncture without a marketplace tab
I wouldn’t like adverts for a ‘free’ account at all. I’d rather pay a couple of quid a month and have a ad-free experience. Adverts are dumb. I googled Huel recently and now all I’ve got is sodding Huel adverts following me around the net absolutely everywhere I click. I conscientiously switch energy suppliers every year, I don’t need them jostling for my attention in my banking app too.
However, I would, as I have explained earlier in this thread, be happy for Monzo to analyse my energy use via my direct debit and offer to switch me to the cheapest deal when my switch time comes around, but only if this was a genuine comparison, and not skewed because Bulb have paid to be bumped up the ratings.
Thanks. I know about those. But my point wasn’t about blocking ads per se, it was that ads are dumb (anyone who thinks they’re getting ‘targeted’ ads is kidding themselves, they’re targeted at broad demographics such as ‘Monzo users who live in London and are male and aged over 40’. Google knows absolutely everything about me as I use it daily and route my email through it, yet as I said, I google one thing and it just serves me the same ad for weeks, constantly tugging at my attention. All the perpetual ads for Huel do is just make me never want to see that brand again. And I don’t ad block because that implies I’m happy to take the free services and content on the net and make sure they don’t get paid for it (if that’s their model). As I said I’d prefer to pay for a service and not have to put up with ads.
Monzo’s ads can be smarter than that though, at least in some instances.
For example, they can definitely tell you that you would save money by buying a monthly travel pass from TFL, rather than paying for your travel on an ad hoc basis, based on your spending history. Then, offer you a loan so that you can buy that season pass straight away & spread the cost in installments.
I would have no problem with that sort of advertising at all, in fact, I’d welcome it.
If the analysis can be made smart enough, then you could even argue that they should be called something different than advertising & instead, they’re ‘insights’ / ‘recommendations’ / ‘suggestions’ etc.
Yeah I covered that above too. I too would welcome proper analysed cost-saving as long as Bulb (for example, in this case) wasn’t paying Monzo more than the other companies to be put into my feed. You just have to look at the comparison sites debacle to see how companies pay more to get further up the rankings. Any kind of impartiality went out the window when they started getting more affiliation cash.
I’m glad to hear there will be an option to permanently opt out when this rolls out to more users, as like others have stated I absolutely do not want ads anywhere near my banking operations.
I’ve been a Tweetbot user since the very beginning. Tweetbot is very good, but it feels like there’s been no development on it for some time. Twitter is evolving their app and I no longer find myself using Tweetbot exclusively.
The one thing that really bugs me about Tweetbot is that if you try and look at a thread it often shows you a load of replies to the initial tweet rather than the thread.
Other than that it’s solid.
