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Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

• mhkool 11y ago
  When I visited Yahoo the other day and looked at the very long list of URLs necessary to track me and to display ads, I knew that the same system without this feature would be a lot cheaper and a lot faster (read: less servers are required). The next thought was that a paid service with a low fee for Yahoo news, email etc. can be profitable and have happy users.
• Gravityloss 11y ago
  What a backwards way to become the middle man in almost all internet monetization.
  • andrewstuart2 11y ago
    Become? I'm pretty sure they already hold that title, or close to it, via adwords.
• ksk 11y ago
  > This is cool for several reasons: 4. Google gets paid, rather than all the money going to the actual website.
  • bryanlarsen 11y ago
    I believe that Google's cut of contributor is smaller than Google's cut of AdWords. (I did a quick search to verify and couldn't find it, so don't take my comment as gospel).
    • jarfil 11y ago
      Why would it be smaller? If anything, it should be exactly the same, you're just outbidding advertisers with your own "ads".
      • bryanlarsen 11y ago
        I thought I read something somewhere that Google is deliberately taking a smaller cut to encourage adoption.
  • skj 11y ago
    This is just you buying the ad slot instead of the advertiser. Why should it be any different for the website's income? If anything, more entities bidding for the ad means the prices can go higher and the website gets more money (though I imagine any difference here would be undetectable).
    • ksk 11y ago
      > Why should it be any different for the website's income? Because the point is that a lot of people who block ads, don't actually like advertising. I would hazard a guess that they want to support websites, but they don't want to support advertising companies, and validate their business.
  • eli 11y ago
    They are facilitating the entire process, processing the credit cards, cutting checks, sending tax forms... Even bitcoin transactions have fees.
    • ksk 11y ago
      According to you, what should be the fees? Google's primary job is to make billions of dollars of profit. I believe an organization like that has all the more incentive to inflate the fees and pocket as much as possible.
      • eli 11y ago
        I'm not sure I understand the question. It's up to each publisher to decide if they make enough on AdSense to justify putting its ads on their site. The success of Google's ad business suggests that even net of fees, many people still think it's worth it. Now, personally, I don't think Google pays me enough to run AdSense on any of my sites. It's frankly not even close, so the fee isn't the issue -- it's just a bad fit for the volume and type of content I produce. I can see why it's great for many other publishers though.
        • ksk 11y ago
          Well, I understand an organization that sets up a network where content creators get paid incurs some costs. I was curious as to what people think is the appropriate amount of fees they should charge for that service.
          • eli 11y ago
            Google's costs and fees are irrelevant to the content creator. They want the ad network that writes the biggest check each month, not the one with the lowest operating overhead. In fact there are many niche ad networks with fees much higher than Google, but they actually pay publishers more because they also charge the advertisers much more.
        • hewhowhineth 11y ago
• untog 11y ago
  This is cool, but would it work on my Android browser (which is my main point of contention with ads)?
  • delinka 11y ago
    It works anywhere a Google ad works.
    • johnward 11y ago
      It's on the ad network side so I would expect it to work everywhere.
    • untog 11y ago
      But how does it know that I'm me? My Google login? I don't think I'm logged in to Google everywhere. Just curious as to how this thing works, basically.
      • mrweasel 11y ago
        More importantly to me: I don't want to login to a Google account. $10 - $15 is a fair price, but I don't want to login. I feel that if I pay for something and it now requires me to have an account I'm getting a worse experience. This is especially true in this case where a free product like uBlock will yield a better result.
  • xeromal 11y ago
    It works for me.
  • vitd 11y ago
    Probably, but it might not solve the problems you have with ads, if those problems are tracking, page size, load times, or screen real estate.
• xbryanx 11y ago
  For the ~price of Netflix subscription, I only get 25-50% fewer ads? Nah...too expensive.
  • onion2k 11y ago
    If it was any cheaper then people would believe ads have very little value which leads to thinking an ad-blocker isn't really harming anyone. I wouldn't be surprised if this product is really, at least in part, a PR move to get people to think seeing adverts is the equivalent of 'saving' $20/month for web content.
    • btown 11y ago
      And it actually is the equivalent of saving that money! If you want quality journalism, or even just an ops budget for the hosting site for your cat pictures, someone needs to pay at some point. There's a very close analogy to print publications: if magazines and newspapers didn't have ads, the newsstand price would be significantly higher due to the loss of impressions. Now, imagine if your Sunday newspaper had a magical printing press that could print, on-demand, a customized version for you without ads. If everyone switched to that option, they'd lose all their ad revenue, so they'd need to raise the newsstand price accordingly!
    • bargl 11y ago
      Which is interesting because of how many people mention that adds really only contribute a small fraction of that. From what I can find $1 per 1000 impressions seems to be about average for ad revenue. That means that if I go to 1000 websites in a month I'd expect to pay about $1. I'd be interested to see how many impressions I make per month and find out how much money I actually generate for these websites. I'd also be interested in a focused ad session to reduce the cost of my browsing. I.E. you show me products and I actually click on them to check them out, and you add money to my pool for browsing. It would have to be an opt-in scenario, but that would be an alternative to paying and seeing ads while you browse.
      • sago 11y ago
• AJ007 11y ago
  Google already pays to remove adblockers. http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/03/amazon-google-microsoft-adblock-plus/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/03/amazon-google-microsoft-a... On the other hand, looks like a nice social engineering experiment in figuring out how to convince users to be tracked better.
• mk00 11y ago
  If they add some little visual perk, like an icon next to your youtube name, I bet popularity in this would grow.
• devit 11y ago
  The biggest problem of this is that it only works on Google's ads, but there are far more obnoxious ads that will result in the user wanting and installing an adblocker anyway, and then why bother with Contributor?
  • johnward 11y ago
    Most users tend to complain about flying, pop ups, auto playing audio/video. Google does none of that. So is there a real benefit here?
    • malchow 11y ago
      Some would say that there are a number of auto-playing audio and app store redirect ads on Doubleclick AdExchange.
      • wlesieutre 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#/media/File:Weasel_words.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#/media/File:Weasel... Either they do or they don't. A quick google didn't turn anything up, but does someone have a reputable source?
        • malchow 11y ago
          I was trying to be polite, not weasly. https://blog.malwarebytes.org/malvertising-2/2014/09/googles-doubleclick-ad-network-abused-once-again-in-malvertising-attacks/ https://blog.malwarebytes.org/malvertising-2/2014/09/googles... http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/247982/google-doubleclick-network-hit-with-more-malvertis.html http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/247982/google-... http://www.csoonline.com/article/2924309/malware-cybercrime/advertisers-need-to-start-monitoring-ad-security.html http://www.csoonline.com/article/2924309/malware-cybercrime/... http://readwrite.com/2014/05/15/app-redirects-mobile-spam-ads http://readwrite.com/2014/05/15/app-redirects-mobile-spam-ad...
          • 11y ago
• trothamel 11y ago
  So with this system, the same amount of space is still taken up by ads? I don't think that's really a huge improvement. I think my ideal system would be something where a website can offer a bitcoin* address in a header, and at the end of the month my browser randomly picks a set of addresses it's seen, and sends money to them. (In conjunction with current ad-blocking technology.) * Bitcoin probably wouldn't work due to transaction limits, but maybe some sort of sidechain, alternative coin, or something similar.
  • gknoy 11y ago
    Or, even better, gave a proportional amount based on the amount you've visited. Better yet, give a Humble-Bundle-like distribution slider to allow you to alter it by preferences ("HN already has funding, give all of my BTC to individual bloggers they've linked...").
  • johnward 11y ago
    Someone could probably build a browser plugin to at least keep track and divvy up money. The real problem is people say they want to support sites but they really don't want to see ads or support the site.
  • exelius 11y ago
    > I think my ideal system would be something where a website can offer a bitcoin* address in a header, and at the end of the month my browser randomly picks a set of addresses it's seen, and sends money to them. (In conjunction with current ad-blocking technology.) This is so ripe for abuse it's not even funny. It would take clickjacking to a whole new level. This is the whole problem with microtransactions: sites need them to be frictionless or else users will abandon the flow no matter how low the price is, but financial transactions need some sort of user confirmation or else they're wide open to abuse.
    • jacques_chester 11y ago
      > This is the whole problem with microtransactions: sites need them to be frictionless or else users will abandon the flow no matter how low the price is, but financial transactions need some sort of user confirmation or else they're wide open to abuse. I agree. I solved this problem with a 3-party protocol (user, provider, authenticator) that can't be subverted by either the user or the provider. No user intervention is required; it works seamlessly. User identity is not revealed and the provider cannot piggyback on the shared tokens to create a persistent identifier. The same scheme can be used to provide effortless passage through paywalls, as well as enabling the same model as Contributor (and before them Kachingle, Contenture, Readability and several others who've failed).
• bkanber 11y ago
  This is fascinating. Business model: annoy people so much that they pay you to stop annoying them. Everybody's been talking about the death of display ads, and it looks like Google's paying attention and trying to figure out how to marginalize the ad itself, but still take money on the transaction. Eventually, Google could probably marginalize the ad so much that there are only a rare few display ads left online, and Google has cleverly tricked us into keeping that industry aloft, essentially paying to keep something we hate alive.
  • asimilator 11y ago
    > Google has cleverly tricked us into keeping that industry aloft, essentially paying to keep something we hate alive. We hate content creators?
    • elorant 11y ago
      We hate shitty content creators (like Buzzfeed) who replicate content from other sources or even worse disguise ads with content (i.e. native advertising) . We also hate paying for the whole site just to read a couple of articles every now and then. How about a pay-by-article model with widespread adoption from the industry? I'd gladly go for it. Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling we kill ad blocking. Simple as that.
      • austenallred 11y ago
        It sounds like when you're saying "we" you really mean "I."
        • Reedx 11y ago
          Bingo. Most people don't even realize they are being tracked via ads. And if they did, they wouldn't care. Look at how many know about the NSA yet don't really care, and ad tracking is small potatoes compared to that.
        • elorant 11y ago
• njsubedi 11y ago
  I have always thought, the extra packets received by ads add up to my internet bills. Now I can serve a blank page and save some data. ;)
• minimaxir 11y ago
  In terms of generating-revenue-without-running-ads, I do think Patreon is still a better option, as it both provides a consistent, nonseasonal revenue source for the author and content guarantees for the user; a win-win in both cases. Google Contributor is more of a charitable option which might be too subtle.
  • DiabloD3 11y ago
    I agree, Patreon is a much saner model that content creators I actually care about are using.
  • TheGRS 11y ago
    I'm going to second Patreon as a good revenue source. Those of us that consume the web want quality content, but that content does not come cheaply (think big production, high quality videos with sets, actors, scripts, editing and visual effects). Money needs to flow somehow in some way for these things to be made, but the current model rewards lots of cheap, small effort content to make money by scaling the amount of it.
  • Matt_Cutts 11y ago
    I agree and do Patreon too, but there's a lot of folks not on Patreon.
• hartator 11y ago
  Has someone tried out to give his own view? It feels it doesn't address the other reasons people use ad blocking: - Fewer HTTP requests (Still have to do all the ad network requests) - Less tracking - Less CPU/RAM usage (Even if there is no render of ads, still have to process the JS from ad networks)
  • emergentcypher 11y ago
    This is why I won't be using this. I don't want ten different ad network javascripts being loaded and running on every single page, along with whatever assets they want to load up and all the tracking they do across websites. And tracking is a huge one. This is no longer just a question of whether I'm supporting the site I visit. Whatever your site has to offer is not worth the all-encompassing tracking that the networks are doing. If it is, you'll have a subscription fee I can pay and your service will be valuable enough that I'll pay it.
  • Reedx 11y ago
    I've been using it for about 6 months. I don't use ad blocking, so it certainly helps. When it happens to replace all ads on a site it feels good, but that's unfortunately rare. :/ I like the idea, but because it's so random it falls into an unsatisfying place most of the time. Really I'd rather it work for most other ad networks instead, since AdSense is among the least offensive. If Google manages to get other networks into the system, it could be really nice.
• flixic 11y ago
  US only.
• coldpie 11y ago
  This seems neat, but can I still use noscript and my ad blocker? I feel like the ads need to be display-able for their backend to know I'm visiting a page. But I use noscript and ublock, so it would fail to pay out.
  • blacksmith_tb 11y ago
    My experiments so far (with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Exploding Cookies, and Random User Agent all on) suggest no. It seems like you'd have to do some extra work to whitelist sites so that they could get paid. It isn't clear what GOOG will do with my $2 if they can't attribute my visits...
• michaelt 11y ago
  Q: Isn’t there a waitlist to join? Or I need an invite or something? A: Not anymore! You can sign up immediately and support tons of websites with one monthly payment. Unfortunately, I still get this: Join the waitlist Contributor is not yet available in your country. :(
  • pixelcort 11y ago
    I'm seeing this too, from Japan.
• johnward 11y ago
  With the recent ad blocker threads I wanted to see how many of my users actually use an adblocker. I have a technical tutorials site that is not that active anymore. I estimate that tech sites will likely have a higher percentage of adblock users. I track this using a Google Analytics custom variable and the blockadblock script (a fork of fuckadblock with a less offensive name). So far I detect that 15-20% of my users have an adblocker enabled. This probably misses some percentage of people since it uses GA and JS. Users with ghostery or JS disabled won't be detected but it's close enough for me. The numbers are not quite as high as I expected them to be.
• monochromatic 11y ago
  I like that people are thinking in this direction, and I would in principle be happy to pay a smallish monthly fee instead of just using an ad blocker. But this system doesn't really solve the issues I have with ads.
• Klathmon 11y ago
  The best part about this is that you have really fine grained control over where your money goes. Don't like it going to a specific site? You can disable just that site in the settings. Want to replace ads with an image of something random? You can do that as well! Want to only have contributor run on a few hand-picked sites? Can do that too! A friend of mine has it setup so that it's whitelist only where he disables his adblock just for those sites, and allows contributor to work only on them. It's actually a really nice and well thought out system.
  • rapind 11y ago
    This is exactly what I was considering. Basically only paying for the content that I think has value by disabling uBlock or w/e for those sites. It would be nice if I wasn't also being tracked though since I'm paying for the content myself.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
• maelito 11y ago
  So you can't try the website before paying right ?
• pmlnr 11y ago
  umm, https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/, anyone?
• weinzierl 11y ago
  If I can do this anonymously I'm sold. I think there is a considerable overlap between the target group for this feature and the group of privacy aware people. Let us create anonymous profiles, give us the possibility to pay via prepaid card and you will be our hero again, Google.
• MilesTeg 11y ago
  I would pay $2 to $10 per month to remove all adds from youtube. I would not bother with this.
• mrbig4545 11y ago
  or, here's a crazy idea, I keep adblocking, and keep my money? I adblock not to block ads, but for privacy. I don't like being tracked, and using contributor won't fix that
• austenallred 11y ago
  I've been a contributor member for several months now, because I firmly believe in two things: 1. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist. 2. Life without ads is much better. So here's what people need to know about Google contributor: 1. I pay for the highest level available. 2. I love not seeing ads. 3. This only works for Google-based ads, which are certainly common, but are neither the majority of advertising online, nor are they among the more annoying. 4. Contributor doesn't work like an ad blocker, which makes ads just "disappear." Instead, you see a big empty block (that is apparently customizable in some way) that says "Thank you for being a contributor. The ad space is still there, it's just blank. So if half of your page used to be covered in ads, now half your page is covered in little blocks that say, "Thank you for being a contributor." For example, here's a screenshot of iMore (the site that was used to compare ios9's ad blockers): https://austen-screenshots.s3.amazonaws.com/iMore__The_1_site_for_iPhone_iPad_Mac_and_all_things_Apple_cllk8.png https://austen-screenshots.s3.amazonaws.com/iMore__The_1_sit... I'd almost prefer ads. 5. This doesn't stop most of your pages from taking forever to load because of JavaScript from other ad networks. 6. I don't care about the tracking/privacy as much as some people, but it doesn't solve that problem either. So, do I think this is a good idea? Absolutely. I hope Google can expand it, and I will pay. I have no idea how expensive it would be to pay for the disappearance of all ads, but I'd likely do it. (I recognize I'm not the "average" Internet user as far as what I'm willing to pay). That being said, it does not yet come close to competing with the convenience that an ad-blocker provides (which I don't use out of principle). It's still early, so I give some leeway, and I like the idea, but as of yet this won't be a game changer. I truly hope it can become one.
  • hartator 11y ago
    Just out of curiosity, how much are you paying per month?
    • austenallred 11y ago
      $15/month. There's a sliding scale that goes in $1 increments.
• analog31 11y ago
  Once everybody is paying to avoid looking at ads, what will be the point of advertising?
  • wang_li 11y ago
    Once everybody is paying, they'll start slipping ads back in.
  • darkstar999 11y ago
    Ads will be sneakier. Product placements. Sponsored articles. Celebrity endorsements.
  • jarfil 11y ago
    Who cares about advertising, when everybody is paying already.
• Kiro 11y ago
  Can I do this without hiding the ads? I really like the concept of supporting the sites I visit directly and automatically but I prefer to see all ads.
• ISL 11y ago
  I've been using Contributor for the last month or so: 1) One needn't turn on all third-party cookies to make it work. Enabling a subset of [*.]doubleclick.com, [*.]doubleclick.net, and [*.]google.com is sufficient. 2) Contributor is the best existing solution to the third-party micropayment problem I've yet encountered. Direct contributions to sites are surely preferable, but not yet practical. Contributor would appear to have the following structural shortcomings: - It only applies to Google's ad network. Mass adoption of Contributor would have the knock-on effect of strengthening Google's advertising position. Whether Google will remain a benevolent ad-network for life is uncertain. - It installs a third party as a middleman, when only agreed-upon social and networking protocols are truly requisite. If Contributor were to take off, we run the risk of paying rent to Google for web-view transactions, just as we do with credit-card firms for financial transactions today. That said, Contributor is a practical step forward in allowing us to underwrite sites we like and to raise the minimum bid that advertisers must pay to get our attention. Thanks, Contributor team, for making this possible.
  • kawera 11y ago
    I would add another shortcoming: Contributor is owned by an ad network.
  • ssharp 11y ago
    Thanks for the rational reply. Some of the cynical and critical comments here strike me as far too idealistic. This seems like a completely reasonable step to take in offering websites money for ad-free content without having to subscribe to individual content. The privacy argument, I can easier get on board with. Why does Google need to still track you if you're not seeing ads? Wasn't the point of ad tracking to get you more relevant ads, help advertisers with remarketing, etc. ?
    • delecti 11y ago
      They need to track you to associate your contributor account with your browsing.
    • drdeca 11y ago
• arihant 11y ago
  How is this not April? The problem with this approach is this -- you're still bidding on the ad spot. While this is cool, here are ignored issues: 1. It removes Google ads, which are arguably the least annoying ads. 2. Since it is still ad-spot based revenues, it gives a publisher no real business model switch to stop using ads in the long run. It is pretty agnostic that way, publisher does not care who bid on the ad spot. 3. No way for publisher to go ad-free. 4. Still got all the nasty ad networks, other benefits of ad-blocking like tracking, speed are not gained. I think this is cool to remove Google's ads, but I would yearn the day where there is a Spotify-like way of opting out of ads altogether for millions of websites. I mean this from publisher side of things. Someone should give them an option to get paid for hits without putting up ads. But then again, I don't mind ads that much.
• adanto6840 11y ago
  Does this work on YouTube ads? If so, I'd pony up in a heartbeat...
  • corywright 11y ago
    Same here. I'd happily pay a monthly subscription to stop seeing ads in the YouTube iPad app.
• rumayor 11y ago
  very cool. Does this block ads on google itself?
• izacus 11y ago
  "Contributor is not available in your country." Well, I guess my Euros aren't good enough for content creators. Unfortunately for them, my privacy is not a currency I will use to pay for content.
  • doctorshady 11y ago
    You have to be logged into a Google account to use Contributor anyway.
• jowiar 11y ago
  "Make 25% of your ads go away" feels a whole lot like the "cable TV will have less ads" promise of old. We all know how that turned out. The outcome of this is going to be "publishers run extra ads, you pay to make the extra ads go away".
  • wnevets 11y ago
    wasn't the promise of cable no ads rather than less?
    • damontal 11y ago
      yep. satellite radio too.
• habosa 11y ago
  I love Contributor, but I'll just leave this here: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2490 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2490
• chetanahuja 11y ago
  Does this sound like a good old fashioned "pay for protection" type business model to anyone else?
  • bandicity 11y ago
    No the emperor's clothes are fantastic!
• chmullig 11y ago
  I love the concept of this. Essentially it's just letting you enter the ad auction for yourself, with a monthly spending cap (I imagine it's a little trickier under the hood, but maybe not that much trickier). I signed up yesterday after a friend mentioned it, and it's near. It's definitely a minority of ads, but it's still nicer to see cat pics than other shit.
• eordano 11y ago
  I'd like to see more products/interaction/experiments in the way ChangeTip is going: https://www.changetip.com/ https://www.changetip.com/ It feels way more human than a big corporation's effort, and way more direct.
• anarazel 11y ago
  And at the same time I make it even easier for google to build a high quality profile of my activities. I'm a bit paranoid, but that bothers me more than actually seeing the ads.
• hguillermo 11y ago
  I like https://www.adieu.io/ https://www.adieu.io/. You should try it
• supercanuck 11y ago
  This is great, now wealthy tech/content moral apologists can pay for the content they want while the rest of us can get on with our lives about using ad-blockers. Most of those properties, New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, Business Insider are currently making a profit, so why is there this moral outrage that they are not getting paid? These businesses are not charities, they are not owed your money when they choose to display free content with easily blocked ads, they are businesses.
  • IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    You really think they'll continue to make money when inevitably adblocker software on any browser becomes as ubiquitous as messenger or camera software on a phone? That's the whole issue. The current ad model isn't really sustainable in that light. There's no outrage they're not getting paid, there is concern that extrapolating current trends, they won't get paid a few years down the line and will either shut down or enforce changes that radically change the internet for the worse. You can either get a closed market where every piece of content is paid for like Netflix and you start to see all kinds of lock-in effects that drive monopolies (if I switch from this vendor to a slightly better one I can't transfer my music/files/videos/articles etc, so I'd rather stay with what I have), as well as putting a price floor on information that used to be free with inconvenience for potentially hundreds of millions who can't afford the digital subscription, which radically changes the internet. Or you can get a different compensation model for content, like paying not to see ads without having to subscribe to a particular business's content, or buy their content pieces on their platform. This is what that is. Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think pretty naive.
    • mahranch 11y ago
      > Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think pretty naive. A third option that I think is the most likely (because it's already begun to happen): Programs & plugins for websites that serve ads up natively from the local website. This means there's no call to a third party. It means there would be nothing to block and the ad gets through. If the ad is a simple image or gif file, an ad blocker would have no way to tell what it is. It wouldn't know if it's a picture of a cat with a piece of bread on its head or an ad for denture cream. This is because the picture is coming from the website you're visiting and could have a name like cute-cat.jpg. It basically nullifies the host file for ad blockers. That's what I think is going to happen. All the big ad companies (cough, google) need to do is revamp their ad network slightly and ad blockers become significantly less useful overnight. I'm not saying it would make ad blockers 100% obsolete, far from it. They'd still be useful. But a lot, and I mean a lot more ads would get through that wouldn't have before. If even 40% more get through, that's still a huge number.
• jacques_chester 11y ago
  Google Contributor can't work, for two reasons. 1. As soon as it becomes too widespread, Google will nerf it. They rely almost entirely on advertising for their revenues. There's just too much money for them to not water the scheme down in future. Remember when cable TV was going to be ad-free? 2. It only works inside Google's semi-walled garden. This is true of every microsubscription scheme so far built (Spotify, Amazon Underground, Apple Music). They have all required a walled garden in order to avoid massive fraud and money laundering. I'm biased, because it so happens that I solved the second problem. I have a patented protocol which is opt-in, can reliably track users on the web without identifying them and which is resistant to fraudulent visits. I'm building the first release. Contact me if you're interested: jacques@robojar.com.
  • ISL 11y ago
    If it's patented, you can safely tell us more... how does your protocol work?
    • jacques_chester 11y ago
      Excluding all the fiddly bits: 1. A user request comes with an added header with the user's version of events. 2. The provider adds their version of events and forwards it to an authenticator. 3. The authenticator cross checks the details and signatures and logs the transaction, optionally telling the provider "yes, this person is a paying participant". I have a more detailed protocol writeup, which is easier to follow than the patent (which was lovingly converted to patentese by a lawyer). I'm at work, happy to email to interested parties. Best address to reach me is jacques@robojar.com
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    > As soon as it becomes too widespread, Google will nerf it. They rely almost entirely on advertising for their revenues. Contributor directly replaces advertising revenue; if it provides a better UX for end-users, sites that use exclusively traditional advertising rather than Google's model with Contributor will suffer reduced traffic (and thus, won't get money from advertising.) If Contributor gets widespread, its good for Google, increases costs for advertisers to reach eyeballs (whether they use Google's ad network or not), and bad for ad networks other than Google's that don't do something like what Google is doing with Contributor. > It only works inside Google's semi-walled garden. It certainly only works on sites that actively choose to use Google's advertising network. I'm not sure that's a "walled garden" in any meaningful sense.
• Animats 11y ago
  We remove Google ads now, for free. Try our Ad Limiter[1] add-on for Firefox and Google Chrome. It removes all but one ad from Google search result pages. The one remaining ad is picked using our SiteTruth web site legitimacy rating system. (You can turn that off, too, in the preferences.) No fees. No ads. No tracking. It's a free demo for our rating system. Works for Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and DuckDuckGo too. On Firefox for Android, too. Why pay for what you can get for free? [1] http://www.adlimiter.com http://www.adlimiter.com https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ad-limiter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ad-limiter/
• sergiotapia 11y ago
  Why pay for this is uBlock Origin is free? I never asked for ads, and websites never asked to charge me. I'm not going to pay tons of cash to see -25% ads. Not gonna happen.
• DLarsen 11y ago
  Has anyone arrived at an estimate that puts the cost in terms of CPM? I know that at least in terms of what makes it out to RTB across most of the exchanges, a person like me will account for about 1000 bid requests in a month. Even if we pad that significantly, there's a good chance I'd be paying paying a pretty rich CPM rate. Given that folks who would likely sign up for this are probably not heavy clickers, my strong hunch is that Google is raking in a pretty fat margin. If an advertiser really wants you, they pay up and you see the ad. In other words, you're probably competing with advertisers to drive up the price of the impression.
• Aldo_MX 11y ago
  The only time I clicked on an ad, it was an ad about a product in Amazon I previously intended to purchase but it didn't have stock. My reaction was a "wow, does it have stock now??? let me hurry!!! what? no stock? why do you advertise a product without stock???" After that moment, the ad kept following me during several days...
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• oldpond 11y ago
  I'd pay to remove the ad makers.
• zxlk21e 11y ago
  the interesting part is that he says you basically bid on the placement yourself. Lots of publishers are paid via CPC, so only when clicks are made. I'm guessing this has to be CPM bid then, in which case to be effective you're going to burn through you $2 per month awfully fast. Another thing - if you're actually taking part in the bidding process this is a trojan horse to jack up the bid prices (they work in an auction format roughly) for everyone else. Well played, evil Google.
• aylons 11y ago
  I don't like the current proposition: you pay for seeing less ads, but there's no tier guaranteeing no ads. Even if they guarantee 99% less ads, I still wouldn't sign for it. Paying for seeing less ads does not change the incentives for tracking and targeting, and may even worsen them: surely Google will start by cutting the less targeted ads and will keep the most targeted ones. The more I cut the ads, the more targeted the remaining ads will be, and stronger will be their incentive to track and analyze my behavior. Only by a policy of no ads and no other revenue stream besides my money would avoid some of these perverse incentives. Of course, Google Contributor would still have to track the sites I visit, so I wouldn't be able to prevent tracking with a technical tool if I signed for it. This adds even more to the argument that Contributor is only an option if no ads are allowed, so that he incentives for targeting and analysis are now removed.
• TheQwerty 11y ago
  I've been trialing Contributor for the past month and there's two reasons I'm going to continue... 1. It works anywhere I can log into Google, which means I see less ads on my mobile device or in browsers where I might not have been able to install an ad blocking extension. 2. You can configure what you see in place of most ads. Thus my browsing now has more cats: http://imgur.com/fqF0YJb http://imgur.com/fqF0YJb The only reason I'm thinking about ditching Contributor at this point is because I'm more of a dog lover.
• lotsoflumens 11y ago
  There's another way ... it may sound a bit crazy at first, but I think it's the only approach that will work. * Advertisers must start paying visitors to view their ads * Not just for clicking on ads, but simply for loading them into your browser and looking at them or listening to them. I read somewhere yesterday that the ad business is $40 billion/year. None of that money goes to the people who are being abused daily by the onslaught of mental pollution that this "industry" produces. What should be troubling to all advertisers, is that almost all of this stuff is displayed to people who will never buy their products. Luckily, we have the mechanisms now to efficiently do this: Bitcoin etc. I foresee a payment system, probably mostly run by Google since they are the most connected to the current system, to mediate between ad-viewers and ad-producers. There's the problem of detecting bots vs. people, but that already exists. This system would also be good for website owners (content creators). A website owner would benefit by providing a reason for people to visit, thereby also gaining a percentage of the ad revenue. People visiting a website would be, in a sense, qualified-buyers of the products that could be advertised there, resulting in more targeted ads, perhaps by using the bitcoin addresses and the associated browsing history (something that's also already tracked but without consent). I think it's the only way out of this mess. I don't have all the details worked out, I'm sure someone out there knows how to make it work.
  • mahranch 11y ago
    > None of that money goes to the people who are being abused daily by the onslaught of mental pollution that this "industry" produces. Why should it? They're the ones consuming the free content. They get to view whatever content they're looking at, for free. You watch a funny cat video on youtube, that's your "reward". That's the product you're buying with your time. I don't know why people feel so entitled to free stuff. They forget that the content they're viewing is subsidized by ads. It's only free because of ads. Here's a question; Would you sit through a 60 second commercial to watch a completely brand new episode of Game of Thrones that no one has seen yet? If not, then switch Game of Thrones to whatever your favorite TV show is. Is the answer now yes? Ok, good. Now why should the advertiser also pay you to view the ad? Your "payment" is getting to watch game of thrones. The people who created game of thrones should the one's getting paid by the advertiser, not you. Now I know not all content is "good" and worth your time viewing ads, but that's a matter of subjectivity and not really worth discussing. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to content. What matters is the fact that content is subsidized ads. For whatever reason, this is an extremely hard concept for many people to grasp. As a content creator myself, it's extremely frustrating.
• lucideer 11y ago
  While I do find ads very mildly annoying, I don't tend to visit too many sites that have very intrusive advertising. My primary reason for using an adblocker (I don't use an adblocker actually, I use uBlock which is more general) is to reduce tracking and increase privacy. I would previously have assumed that this was the same motivation most technically proficient adblocker users, but the comments here on HN seem to bely that assumption completely. Are people really that bothered by ads that they would pay Google to continue to track their every move on the web silently???
  • LesZedCB 11y ago
    Getting away from tracking is primarily why I use it. I also tend to be surprised by people thinking ad blocking is about blocking ads as well, though. Especially here, maybe it's just a cultural shift towards generally being ok with being tracked. Oh, I hope not, though...
• lucideer 11y ago
  While I do find ads very mildly annoying, I don't tend to visit too many sites that have very intrusive advertising. My primary reason for using an adblocker (I don't use an adblocker actually, I use uBlock which is more general) is to reduce tracking and increase privacy. I would previously have assumed that this was the same motivation most technically proficient adblocker users, but the comments here on HN seem to bely that assumption completely. Are people really that bothered by ads that they would pay Google to continue to track their every move on the web without visible Google-run ads???
• PhilipA 11y ago
  Am I the only one who sees this as a defence, and a try to tackle that Apple is promoting an ad free web? If Google could get a % of the cut, it could help with lost revenue from the many ad blockers.
• skue 11y ago
  This still gives Google the ability to track the web pages we visit, and many of us block ads because of tracking, not because they're ugly. That said, I do think that solutions like Google Contributor are the way forward if it can become an open standard that supports anonymization. I'm willing to trust my browser and a local, open-source wallet to watch the sites that I visit and authorize micro-payments via an anonymous currency. Those payments could be delivered to websites via middlemen that include ad vendors like Google or other processors. It would require careful design and numerous security considerations, but it seems possible to use this model to support publishers while maintaining privacy.
• ocean3 11y ago
  If people are bothered by ads why not stop visiting those sites? I am not interested to pay to stop ads. As an Indian its pricer to me as well. I don't mind ads if it allows the content creator to publish more. But i do stop visiting sites with craps ads.
• pnathan 11y ago
  Hey! This is kind of cool! I didn't know about this. It's like micropayments-in-a-box. I think I might do this (but have to think about the system). However, I do have one thought. Google ads initially were incredibly popular because they weren't in your face asking for the monkey to be punched. Which is still pretty much the case. The worst ads aren't being served by Google, they're being served by Tabooleh and the other bad-content farms.
• pnathan 11y ago
  Hey! This is kind of cool! I didn't know about this. It's like micropayments-in-a-box. I think I might do this (but have to think about the system). However, I do have one thought. Google ads initially were incredibly popular because they weren't in your face asking for the monkey to be punched. Which is still pretty much the case. The worst ads aren't being served by Google, they're being served by Tabooleh and the other bad-content farms.
• arohner 11y ago
  I'd love it if there was a way to run Contributor while still blocking doubleclick. I'll happily pay, but I'm not turning off adblock, and if I'm paying, I want that page space occupied by the article, not cat pictures.
• robbrown451 11y ago
  I think it is a great idea. I probably won't use it, I tend to just tolerate ads and don't mind them if they aren't obnoxious. I get a lot of Amazon ads, and they typically show things that I am very much in the market for, since they know what I've bought and looked at. I don't mind that kind of ad. What's needed is for ad blockers to have a setting that lets these Contributor "ads" through and blocks the rest, with the setting preferably on by default. My opinion is that use of an ad blocker, while refusing to pay for something like this (especially if it is priced such that Google and the web site make the same amount of money as if you saw the ads), is not ethical, as you are being a freeloader. All the arguments made by those defending ad blockers tend to fall away when something like this is available. If you don't like ads, and don't want to pay directly, you probably shouldn't be consuming the content.
• neves 11y ago
  Great, finally micropayments http://www.useit.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ http://www.useit.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ will work? If Google wants to display its good intentions, they would take a lower percentage when the user bought the ads. The same price paid by an user would top the advertiser.
• neves 11y ago
  Great, finally micropayments http://www.useit.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ http://www.useit.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ will work? If Google wants to display its good intentions, they would take a lower percentage when the user bought the ads. The same price paid by an user would top the advertiser.
• tehwebguy 11y ago
  I'm one of those who don't really care about advertising but doesn't want to be tracked everywhere, so this is sort of the worst of both worlds for me.
• xorcist 11y ago
  I see a couple of issues with programs like this. First, if this were to take off it would move the industry to impression based pricing wholesale. Reprinted content is already on of the biggest problems today, and with this model there is obvious risk that original creators get nothing as reprinters take everything. Second, given that we can't have a monopoly on this business, a webmaster is incentivized to join every Contributor-like program there is. We would end up with every website loading hundreds of javascripts for tracking visits from every provider there is, which would massively increase load times on the web. Third, there are also incentives to game the system by splitting your content over many web sites, using iframes or javascript, each making a call to every possible provider. Similar ad fraud schemes are already a problem today and this will only make them easier. One easy fix would be to make a system opt-in for the end user on a site-by-site basis. This is similar to how Flattr and Patreon works. I pay to both of them, and will probably not join Contributor, but it will be very exciting to see where Google is taking this.
  • johnmaguire2013 11y ago
    I don't think any of these are problems that don't already exist with the way that ads are done. As the article states, all Google Contributor does is buy the ad impression on the page you're visiting. One way or the other, there will be an ad impression on that page. This doesn't incentivize webmasters to put any more ads on than they already do, as far as I can tell. From their perspective, ads are working normally.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • sangnoir 11y ago
    To my knowledge, Contributor uses the same infrastructure and technology as ads, but with a different payload. All 3 problems you mentioned are problems being experienced today: 1. Google is already able to guage 'low quality' pages, co temt farms and pirates. This doesn't change 2. This happenens with ads, Google can add a rule saying you "can't have x amount of ads of you want to be on our network " 3.Likely to stay the same: I don't see how contributor makes fraud easier
• downandout 11y ago
  The reality is that few people will do this as long as it's optional. The masses are short-sighted. For anything like this to work, a publisher needs to block the display of their content if ad-blocking is in place. They could bring up something that says "you have one of two choices: go to <Google contributor-like network> and pay, or disable your adblocker". If people run into this enough, they'll do one or the other.
  • dwb 11y ago
    Actually you just need to hold down the refresh button to be able to reload with content blockers temporarily disabled.
• esnesnu 11y ago
  very cool
• esnesnu 11y ago
  very cool
• Nursie 11y ago
  I find these things interesting, but not so much I won't use an adblocker. Perhaps I can buy into this and allow google ads, and then block the resulting 'thanks' text. I don't need that either. I find the whole thing odd though. I never click ads when I do see them, I literally have never, ever bought anything through advertising links. Even without an adblocker, the only reason the site would be getting money from my view is that the advertiser is being ripped off - I am literally a worthless view to them. In fact for any ad that's beyond static text I am more likely to remember your brand and deliberately not buy your stuff in future. So effectively, any site that was being supported by my visits would be scamming the advertiser. I'm kind of OK with that, but the other benefits of adblocking (no tracking, no random scripts executing, much faster page-loading etc) far outweigh any concerns. I know, I'm accessing your content without paying at the moment. I would be happy to put a header in my http requests that says I will not render ads, and allow you to decide if you want to serve me. Until then, I'm going to carry on freeloading, but make no mistake - if I wasn't, you would be.
  • kbenson 11y ago
    > I am literally a worthless view to them. Well,you don't decide your own worth in this system. Your first mistake is assuming the only usefulness they get from you is when you click on an ad to buy something. That's a very naive view of advertising.
    • ethanbond 11y ago
      Implying that someone somewhere knows the real value of his/her view. The whole advertising industry is built on a very naive view of advertising.
    • Nursie 11y ago
      >> Your first mistake is assuming the only usefulness they get from you is when you click on an ad to buy something. To the advertisers? No I'm sure they think that 'brand awareness' is useful too, only it's not, if you annoy me into noticing your brand I will deliberately not buy it.
• tefo-mohapi 11y ago
  The issue with digital media vs print is that people are already paying for connectivity to the internet making them less likely to want to pay for access to content. We've seen it with music and video and will continue seeing it with text / news content.
• kazinator 11y ago
  Of course Google will pocket a big chunk of the revenue, doh! It's a clever scam to exploit people's guilt to get them to part with some cash, nothing more. Donate directly, your favorite sites, and then block their ads yourself. Do not pay this "opt-out ransom". Heck, it's better to send a donation to someone who makes free ad-blocking software.
• sago 11y ago
  The problem with this scheme is that it still involves trusting the ad platform, the advertisers (some still show), and the ad strategy of the website. Trusting them to not serve anything nasty, trusting them to account for our money correctly, trusting them to show moderation in the number of ad 'slots' they try to fill. Ad blockers remove that trust. The industry has shown they are untrustworthy, overall (i.e. there are some that are trustworthy, but you have no way of identifying if a particular site will have only them showing, or even if it will be the same next time you visit). I adblock. I also back a range of Patreons, and regularly support some other sites. For example, I support BoardGameGeek. I'd support more content creators if that were a possibility. But I'm not going to do it via the proxy of the advertising platforms.
• gress 11y ago
  If Google thought there was a problem with intrusive ads, they would penalize them.
• paulsutter 11y ago
  Did this work for anyone? I tried it and saw no change, even on the websites they suggest on the checkout page.
• unabridged 11y ago
  This will probably only block the ads that don't bother me, text and banners. The part I hate is the javascript bloat that loads from 1000 domains, the fullscreen popup that asks me to subscribe, and the autoplaying videos.
• Steko 11y ago
  Propping up the existing system with money doesn't sound like a solution. If there's a fox in the henhouse, leaving a bowl of fox chow next to the chickens isn't going to fix the problem.
• manigandham 11y ago
  To offer some perspective on the advertiser side: 1) Content costs money. Only way to pay is directly or indirectly (via ads). Ads are the only micropayment system that works at scale so far because it has no overhead of decisions or funds transfer and is monetarily "free". It's also more anonymous than direct payments. 2) Ads do work. Very well. Billions of dollars, millions of work-hours and petabytes of data prove this daily. 3) Ads aren't going anywhere and the industry will not disappear. It's bigger and stronger than ever with billions of clicks, pageviews, video views, tweets, likes, posts, snapchats, etc being sent every day. The technology for delivering ads will change along with more embedded/sponsored content but this model will always be valid. 4) What we're seeing is a reset in the industry to finally care more about the user experience (because they have more control now). Best case scenario - we have better ads, revenue and consumer experiences. Worse case - we're right back where we started or even a whole lot worse with more data tracking. Either scenarios are equally possible.
• 3efuk 11y ago
  hahahaha
• JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  I don't always want to be logged into Google. Edit: Can't shake the thought that this is the mafia offering protection from the bad guys. I know, I know, this isn't reddit. But it's just an odd thought that I had.
• solomatov 11y ago
  IMO, the big problem is that you don't choose who to pay. I don't want to pay to producers of low quality contents and the ones who spammed the google with useless pages which are at the top of the search results for SEO reasons. IMO, micro-transactions which are used to pay by views are much better option, and google is the company who can implement this.
• sudo-i 11y ago
  Isn't a form of extortion?
• tempVariable 11y ago
  It is just short of mafia protection money. The concept that as a user, I don't know the ultimate bribe cost. Plus constant worry that it may go up or worse, the rules have changed and prices( read bribes ) went up. What a backwards way of shimmying your way into what should be : consumer + producer relationship. I want to live in a reality where I know your costs and you tell me how much divided amongst your users is my share to pay. Let's get Google out of the equation. What if we had mandatory HTTP headers: "Content-Cost: 0.02" and my browser had a credit card linked against it and I will decide if your content is good enough to buy. Ads are evil. The industry is evil. And I don't mean it in a bible-churchy-preachy way. These are not people I will ever support with my coin.
• omginternets 11y ago
  At the end of the day, people don't seem to care about whether content-creators get paid. And why should they? There's an almost inexhaustible source of "content" (whatever that means) and for every creator that steps down, another will step in. I will continue to use an ad blocker and not pay Google, thank you very much. If you want me to consume ads, make ads I want to consume.
• roymurdock 11y ago
  I don't understand why people are trying to soften the blow for content-providers who generate revenue through intrusive, annoying, and privacy-invading ads. Why are you defending people who clearly do not respect you? Why are you paying a tax ($15/mo for Google Contributor) to make it so that these people can continue to operate on a broken business model? Why are you so scared of the internet changing? It's nonsensical.
• gglitch 11y ago
  If a single tracker gets through, it's missing the point, at least for me.
• anonyfox 11y ago
  Still relevant: http://blog.plague-dev.de/posts/Adblock-isnt-immoral http://blog.plague-dev.de/posts/Adblock-isnt-immoral . I still don't get why anyone who puts an html file on a webserver is entitled to earn any money from this. Maybe the constant manipulation from all over the media has something to to with it.
• luxpir 11y ago
  I don't use an adblocker, I use a script blocker. It's not about the ads. It's about being re-marketed, tracked, herded, bought and sold by every scummy marketing department in some of the vilest organisations of people the Earth has ever seen. Yes. I want Dave and Leela, bloggers of great human interest, or my favourite journos and comic strip artists to all get paid handsomely for their contributions to mankind. But I don't want a third party sat in the middle of that transaction. Particularly not that one. Work needs doing on both sides of the deal. More donation culture, easier methods, and more motivation to write content that contributes something new for the good of society, however that may be, for the commons. Less rehashed tripe split ten ways, more genuinely deeply considered works that can be easily rewarded. That's what the script blocking movement is really about. Final word, I'm sick of this pervasive attitude that people think they're doing the creator a favour if they pay them. I'm paying you, you get my endorsement, do you have any idea how special that makes you, makes us? We're friends now and everything! Get real. It's ego-mania of the highest form. There are no strings attached to any purchase and the seller owes you nothing beyond what you agreed to buy. Support them without any expectation of even the slightest of ego kickbacks and you'll have your integrity. This Contributor service has an issue with a lack of integrity at its very core. Perverted altruism. A wolf in sheep's clothing.
• Kenji 11y ago
  I'd rather pay my favourite artists directly by means of donation or buying their stuff. Why would I need google for that?
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• shurcooL 11y ago
  Just to clarify, none of the support/money will go to websites that simply don't have ads, right?
• amalcon 11y ago
  Google Contributor is a fantastic idea, and it's (almost) exactly the sort of thing I'd want for a content-provider-supporting endgame. Unfortunately, its a non-starter because it requires browsing while logged into a Google account. I refuse to do that. Not that I believe this will actually prevent Google from tracking me, but because I don't want to make it any easier than it already is.
• neprune 11y ago
  This is a temporary fix. Despite the few conscientious objectors, ad-blockers will be ubiquitous. My best guess: Big-name websites will show more native adds. Companies will be desperate after losing digital adds, especially with the move to on-demand TV - they'll look to spend more on these. Other sites will look to survive by direct payment. We'll see more (and possibly higher) paywalls. Donations will become necessary for those who can't get away with paywalls. It will be harder to keep a small operation self-sufficient. Basically, adds will either still be there (just less obvious) or you'll be paying the difference. This will come at the expense of many small sites.
• maerF0x0 11y ago
  Its unclear to me if you're paying the current rate for the ad space to google or to the amount the creator would get. Eg: Are you buying 1 impression at google's price, or paying the amount the website owner would receive for 1 impression?
• philliphaydon 11y ago
  I don't think anyone is contesting the fact that ads are needed to pay content creators. The problem is, if you go to Engadget with ghostery, leave it disabled. It shows 27 additional items loaded in the page. For WHAT? That's insane. Even imgur has too many external resources for ads and tracking. If ads were not blocking, intrusive, and there wasn't so many of them and not so much tracking. People probably wouldn't care about ads. But websites like Engadget have ruined it for everyone.
• thuruv 11y ago
  Don't anyone here think 45% of the web content are ads which are being forced in to the page?
• Cub3 11y ago
  My process: 1. Read article, sounds like a good idea, maybe I can throw $10 in a month + white-list Google ads in my ad blocker 2. Go to Contributor website, read through all information aaannnddd "Contributor is not yet available in your country." 3. Close tabs and move on
• dools 11y ago
  I'd love to but " Contributor is not yet available in your country. " (Australia)
• hewhowhineth 11y ago
  Sounds like racketeering :)
• shinamee 11y ago
  So to put this simple, I have to pay for what I don't even want in the first place? All these making money companies, pay this pay that
• rtpg 11y ago
  Does $10 really cover the amount sites would be getting if you were looking at ads? I pay more just for NYT (and there's still ads! though not too many) I wonder how willing people would be to pay (for example) $100 a month for this. Chances are that's more representative of the ad revenue you're generating if you're a heavy reader.
• jarfil 11y ago
  Sounds like a great business model: 1. Get a lot of web pages to show your ads 2. Charge advertisers for showing their ads 3. Charge users for not seeing ads 4. Let the bidding wars begin!
• davmar 11y ago
  Imagine if ClearChannel offered a way for you to avoid seeing billboards as you drive for a monthly subscription price...