4 ms·

I agree but they seem to be a major part of the online economy. I think users and advertisers are going to have to reach some kind of agreement for "free" sites

I agree but they seem to be a major part of the online economy. I think users and advertisers are going to have to reach some kind of agreement for "free" sites to continue to exist. I know there are other business models but I would not be surprised if we hit a point where ad supported content no longer exists. I hope some new "free" business model is developed because I certainly don't want a pay as you go model.

nosuchthing 11y ago
Netflix, Mubi, monthly ISP, web hosting, phone lines, Amazon Prime, delivery services... plenty of people are fine paying for rental or pay as you go services.
- johnward 11y ago
  People still want to consume content. What is the business model for content sites? Die? Right now it seems like people want to leach the content with out paying the bills.
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    I happen to know a fair bit about a particular fairly popular content site. Ads make up a minority of their overall revenue, though it's still a significant chunk. They would survive quite easily without ads. The main advantage of ads is that they are potentially brain-dead easy to enable profitability if you have lots of traffic. But even then that's not necessarily an objectively good thing. Also, I wouldn't say that "people want to leach ... with out paying" is accurate whatsoever. Between merch, events, crowd funding, and patronage (patreon et al) there is a massive and rapidly growing amount of money that has been going to content creators direct from content consumers. It's easier than it's been in a long time, perhaps ever, for a creator to support themselves, aside from ads, and it's only getting easier.
  - joepie91_ 11y ago
    That's a claim that people have made since pretty much the dawn of advertising on the internet, but there has yet to be any research actually backing that statement.
    - paulhauggis 11y ago
      It's pretty simple: If I have a website that relies on advertising to make money and the majority of people coming to my site have ad block, they will never see my ads and I won't make money. But it really only hurts the small business trying to eek out a living. Small businesses will go under and what's left will be large conglomerates. Hacker news seems to be a popular place for people that no nothing about economics and do everything in their power to willingly give up markets to the likes of large companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The interesting part is that that then there's outrage when the above companies abuse their monopoly...when the regulations and culture that you supported created them in the first place!
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    Some content is worth paying for, some content isn't worth spending time on even when it's free. http://www.pledgesociety.com/ http://www.pledgesociety.com/ (Patreon) https://streamtip.com/ https://streamtip.com/
    - johnward 11y ago
      Are those numbers accurate? 67k per month to draw shit? I'd be more interested in the mean monthly earnings. There are hundreds of pages of content creators making $0 per month. In fact only about the first 10 pages make what I would consider a livable wage, but would still technically be poverty in the US. Only about 100 people are making a decent middle class wage. About 40% of the users on that first site make less than $100 per month. 90% are making less than $1000 per month. There are certainly sites that make way more than $67k per month in advertising fees. Tipping might be one of the possible business models but it still has a long way to go.
Animats 11y ago
There's a web without ads. Sites that actually sell products, from Amazon on down, don't need third party ads on their sites. Sites which discuss some specific topic often have forums, because they want more people talking about startups, or CNC machining, or private jets. Running Wordpress is cheap, except for keeping other people from spamming their ads onto it. On the mobile side, Apple sells hardware, which pays for the servers that power Siri. Search engines may end up with that model. The news industry is already dead. Except for the New York Times, Reuters, and the Economist, news sites are mostly fluff. It's time for a tax on advertising.
- johnward 11y ago
  This just came to mind when you mentioned "ad tax". Google Adsense recommends you stuff as many ads on to your page as possible. They even alert tell you when you are missing out on revenue by not including the maximum number of ad units. At the same time Google Search announces a penalty for overly ad heavy sites. Ultimately, I believe most of Google's "search penalties" actually serve the purpose of driving any site that makes money to paid search. They disguise them as "UX enhancements" but they really just want you to pay for traffic. They are even trying to compete with Amazon in the Google Shopping product.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Major part NOW, but are they intrinsic and inextricable? I don't think so. And I think on balance they are harmful, but I acknowledge that it'll take a long time to switch the economic dynamics, norms, etc. to a state where ads are rare. However, I think it's possible and I think it's overall preferable. Edit: I'll followup really quick on how ads can be harmful with regard to content making. Ad revenue scales based on eyeballs alone, that's the primary metric. To maximize profit that means you need the most eyeballs and the cheapest to produce content. That causes a pressure towards tabloid-style content, especially in journalism, which has become a very noticeable trend. When there's a more direct route for revenue from content consumers to producers there's more reward for producing higher value content. Having correctly aligned incentives is hugely valuable, and something that has been sorely missing in regard to a lot of content that was produced in the 20th century. It's always easy to look at major business changes as hugely scare and potentially calamitous but in the end it's extraordinarily unlikely that the fire to create art can be easily extinguished and the hunger to consume it won't result in sufficient expenditures to enable creators to support themselves. Overall I'd say a lot of what I've seen in regards to how new creators emerge and get on their feet and how that's changed since the dawn of the web-era has been almost exclusively beneficial.
- johnward 11y ago
  I agree that if users don't want something than it will have to die. I'm just not sure what we replace it with because I think economic drive behind the internet has been the major factor in the growth we've seen. Basically, if people weren't making money the internet wouldn't be anywhere near what we have today. I'm pretty sure we had a completely ad free internet at one point and it kind of sucked compared to the things we have today. Full disclaimer: I made a decent amount of money from advertising in the past. That doesn't mean I don't sympathize with users/consumers. The ad industry pushed too far and users are pushing back. Also I'd probably prefer ads on wikipedia versus the yearly begging but that's another topic.
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    This is the post hoc fallacy though isn't it? It also neglects the many ways that advertising on the internet caused a LOT of serious problems, especially in the early days around the first dot-com bust. For some reason you seem to fall into the trap of thinking that ads vs "begging" are the only options, though that's not going to be true, isn't true now, and hasn't been true for literally decades. There are tons of ways to make money with a non-paywalled content site on the internet, as witnessed by... the many ways that people have been making money on such things for going on two decades.

nosuchthing 11y ago

Netflix, Mubi, monthly ISP, web hosting, phone lines, Amazon Prime, delivery services... plenty of people are fine paying for rental or pay as you go services.

johnward 11y ago
People still want to consume content. What is the business model for content sites? Die? Right now it seems like people want to leach the content with out paying the bills.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  I happen to know a fair bit about a particular fairly popular content site. Ads make up a minority of their overall revenue, though it's still a significant chunk. They would survive quite easily without ads. The main advantage of ads is that they are potentially brain-dead easy to enable profitability if you have lots of traffic. But even then that's not necessarily an objectively good thing. Also, I wouldn't say that "people want to leach ... with out paying" is accurate whatsoever. Between merch, events, crowd funding, and patronage (patreon et al) there is a massive and rapidly growing amount of money that has been going to content creators direct from content consumers. It's easier than it's been in a long time, perhaps ever, for a creator to support themselves, aside from ads, and it's only getting easier.
- joepie91_ 11y ago
  That's a claim that people have made since pretty much the dawn of advertising on the internet, but there has yet to be any research actually backing that statement.
  - paulhauggis 11y ago
    It's pretty simple: If I have a website that relies on advertising to make money and the majority of people coming to my site have ad block, they will never see my ads and I won't make money. But it really only hurts the small business trying to eek out a living. Small businesses will go under and what's left will be large conglomerates. Hacker news seems to be a popular place for people that no nothing about economics and do everything in their power to willingly give up markets to the likes of large companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The interesting part is that that then there's outrage when the above companies abuse their monopoly...when the regulations and culture that you supported created them in the first place!
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Some content is worth paying for, some content isn't worth spending time on even when it's free. http://www.pledgesociety.com/ http://www.pledgesociety.com/ (Patreon) https://streamtip.com/ https://streamtip.com/
  - johnward 11y ago
    Are those numbers accurate? 67k per month to draw shit? I'd be more interested in the mean monthly earnings. There are hundreds of pages of content creators making $0 per month. In fact only about the first 10 pages make what I would consider a livable wage, but would still technically be poverty in the US. Only about 100 people are making a decent middle class wage. About 40% of the users on that first site make less than $100 per month. 90% are making less than $1000 per month. There are certainly sites that make way more than $67k per month in advertising fees. Tipping might be one of the possible business models but it still has a long way to go.

Animats 11y ago

There's a web without ads. Sites that actually sell products, from Amazon on down, don't need third party ads on their sites. Sites which discuss some specific topic often have forums, because they want more people talking about startups, or CNC machining, or private jets. Running Wordpress is cheap, except for keeping other people from spamming their ads onto it. On the mobile side, Apple sells hardware, which pays for the servers that power Siri. Search engines may end up with that model. The news industry is already dead. Except for the New York Times, Reuters, and the Economist, news sites are mostly fluff. It's time for a tax on advertising.

johnward 11y ago
This just came to mind when you mentioned "ad tax". Google Adsense recommends you stuff as many ads on to your page as possible. They even alert tell you when you are missing out on revenue by not including the maximum number of ad units. At the same time Google Search announces a penalty for overly ad heavy sites. Ultimately, I believe most of Google's "search penalties" actually serve the purpose of driving any site that makes money to paid search. They disguise them as "UX enhancements" but they really just want you to pay for traffic. They are even trying to compete with Amazon in the Google Shopping product.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Major part NOW, but are they intrinsic and inextricable? I don't think so. And I think on balance they are harmful, but I acknowledge that it'll take a long time to switch the economic dynamics, norms, etc. to a state where ads are rare. However, I think it's possible and I think it's overall preferable. Edit: I'll followup really quick on how ads can be harmful with regard to content making. Ad revenue scales based on eyeballs alone, that's the primary metric. To maximize profit that means you need the most eyeballs and the cheapest to produce content. That causes a pressure towards tabloid-style content, especially in journalism, which has become a very noticeable trend. When there's a more direct route for revenue from content consumers to producers there's more reward for producing higher value content. Having correctly aligned incentives is hugely valuable, and something that has been sorely missing in regard to a lot of content that was produced in the 20th century. It's always easy to look at major business changes as hugely scare and potentially calamitous but in the end it's extraordinarily unlikely that the fire to create art can be easily extinguished and the hunger to consume it won't result in sufficient expenditures to enable creators to support themselves. Overall I'd say a lot of what I've seen in regards to how new creators emerge and get on their feet and how that's changed since the dawn of the web-era has been almost exclusively beneficial.

johnward 11y ago
I agree that if users don't want something than it will have to die. I'm just not sure what we replace it with because I think economic drive behind the internet has been the major factor in the growth we've seen. Basically, if people weren't making money the internet wouldn't be anywhere near what we have today. I'm pretty sure we had a completely ad free internet at one point and it kind of sucked compared to the things we have today. Full disclaimer: I made a decent amount of money from advertising in the past. That doesn't mean I don't sympathize with users/consumers. The ad industry pushed too far and users are pushing back. Also I'd probably prefer ads on wikipedia versus the yearly begging but that's another topic.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  This is the post hoc fallacy though isn't it? It also neglects the many ways that advertising on the internet caused a LOT of serious problems, especially in the early days around the first dot-com bust. For some reason you seem to fall into the trap of thinking that ads vs "begging" are the only options, though that's not going to be true, isn't true now, and hasn't been true for literally decades. There are tons of ways to make money with a non-paywalled content site on the internet, as witnessed by... the many ways that people have been making money on such things for going on two decades.