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We tried the "paid to browse" thing 15-20 years ago. Didn't go so well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_surf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_surf

jacquesm 11y ago
Times have changed since then and it definitely would not be the first time that something that fell flat out of the gate the first time became a success the second time around. Lots of current successes are actually just warmed over past failures. That's not proof in any way that this might succeed now but there is something to be said or giving that a shot with the number of eyeballs available today (and the harder to advertise to markets that have been unlocked by the web but where ad agencies are not yet capable of selling inventory). If you could centralize that through the browser it would be a fairly powerful strategy if adoption would be large enough (that's the crux), which is why I wondered if it was on their roadmap.
- lsc 11y ago
  huh. See, I thought the reason it failed last time,besides fraud[1], was a broader reason - it's the same reason paid surveys aren't worth very much. the idea is that the people you want to advertise to are precisely the people who are willing to trade money for their time; the opposite of the people you get when you pay folks to watch advertising. [1], in 1998, I seem to remember that one of my co-workers had installed a thing on his work computer that would move the mouse and "browse" the internet when he wasn't there, getting paid for seeing ads.
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    I had one of those ad-display things installed on my computer in that era. I used the manual controls on my CRT to push the ads off the top of the screen, so I could just see like a 2-pixel-wide edge that showed me the thing was still running.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Of the old ad networks only doubleclick survives and they only do so because of google massive anti-fraud measures. Anybody that gets into ads these days will have to take abuse as their #1 priority to be able to compete so if this is to work at all you can bet that anti-fraud measures would make up a very large component of the package. Tying the end-user and one of the primary beneficiaries to the same chair is a risky thing but not all forms of advertising are equally susceptible to this kind of risk. For instance, performance based advertising and to a lesser extent branding are not all that much at risk. On another note fraud is present in all forms of online advertising at the moment (with the same qualifications listed above) and it is simply priced into the ad rates.
micampe 11y ago
We also tried tablets 20 years ago. And VR 30 years ago. And electric cars 140 years ago. I don't really believe this project will work, but your argument is rarely a good reason not to try something.
jhspaybar 11y ago
I actually founded a get paid to surf website named PayBar that was the first to make it to market. It was far far smaller than AllAdvantage, and paid quite a bit less(no VC money = bootstrapped before it was cool). It was a sustainable model however until the bubble burst and rates went from $60 CPM to $2 or less CPM. The original founder of AllAdvantage has also tried in the recent past to do it again with a company named AGLOCO. I have a soft spot for the get paid to surf portion of Internet history, but I really don't see it coming back looking anything like it used to.

jacquesm 11y ago

Times have changed since then and it definitely would not be the first time that something that fell flat out of the gate the first time became a success the second time around. Lots of current successes are actually just warmed over past failures. That's not proof in any way that this might succeed now but there is something to be said or giving that a shot with the number of eyeballs available today (and the harder to advertise to markets that have been unlocked by the web but where ad agencies are not yet capable of selling inventory). If you could centralize that through the browser it would be a fairly powerful strategy if adoption would be large enough (that's the crux), which is why I wondered if it was on their roadmap.

lsc 11y ago
huh. See, I thought the reason it failed last time,besides fraud[1], was a broader reason - it's the same reason paid surveys aren't worth very much. the idea is that the people you want to advertise to are precisely the people who are willing to trade money for their time; the opposite of the people you get when you pay folks to watch advertising. [1], in 1998, I seem to remember that one of my co-workers had installed a thing on his work computer that would move the mouse and "browse" the internet when he wasn't there, getting paid for seeing ads.
- lotharbot 11y ago
  I had one of those ad-display things installed on my computer in that era. I used the manual controls on my CRT to push the ads off the top of the screen, so I could just see like a 2-pixel-wide edge that showed me the thing was still running.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Of the old ad networks only doubleclick survives and they only do so because of google massive anti-fraud measures. Anybody that gets into ads these days will have to take abuse as their #1 priority to be able to compete so if this is to work at all you can bet that anti-fraud measures would make up a very large component of the package. Tying the end-user and one of the primary beneficiaries to the same chair is a risky thing but not all forms of advertising are equally susceptible to this kind of risk. For instance, performance based advertising and to a lesser extent branding are not all that much at risk. On another note fraud is present in all forms of online advertising at the moment (with the same qualifications listed above) and it is simply priced into the ad rates.

micampe 11y ago

We also tried tablets 20 years ago. And VR 30 years ago. And electric cars 140 years ago. I don't really believe this project will work, but your argument is rarely a good reason not to try something.

jhspaybar 11y ago

I actually founded a get paid to surf website named PayBar that was the first to make it to market. It was far far smaller than AllAdvantage, and paid quite a bit less(no VC money = bootstrapped before it was cool). It was a sustainable model however until the bubble burst and rates went from $60 CPM to $2 or less CPM. The original founder of AllAdvantage has also tried in the recent past to do it again with a company named AGLOCO. I have a soft spot for the get paid to surf portion of Internet history, but I really don't see it coming back looking anything like it used to.