8 ms·

Whether it comes from Google, or someone else I believe this is the only way the web survives. Content creators need to be able to charge different amounts for

Whether it comes from Google, or someone else I believe this is the only way the web survives. Content creators need to be able to charge different amounts for different quality content. In depth, well researched reporting needs to be able to earn more than a buzzfeed article. That's not possible with a flat "per-eyeball" cost, where the revenue to the content creator is uncorrelated with the cost to create or the value/quality of the content. I wish it weren't google (who also already owns advertising), but someone large is the only one who can make it happen. A model like this is necessary to support quality content online.

mathw 9y ago
And it has to come from the ad networks, because the infrastructure to make this work is already there - hopefully the ultimate form of this wouldn't require site admins to really do anything special, other than twiddling a few settings in their Google advertising accounts. The real trouble being the more people who use that kind of thing, the more the value of adverts goes down...
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  > And it has to come from the ad networks That is a truth. You need to already have the infra to make this change. I think it'd be too much to both successfully grow a business and try to change browsing behavior at once. > ...The more people who use that kind of thing, the more the value of adverts goes down... Not necessarily a bad thing. If the value of adverts drops, and this is a well known alternative it provides even more incentive to move to model where there is still money to be made. Not to mention there probably is a bit of "recapture". Of people who ran ad-blockers for the experience (ie zero-revenue providers) who are willing to pay for content. Similar to people who torrented, but instead became Netflix/Hulu subscribers when it became an option.
- kbob 9y ago
  I'm not seeing an issue. How is it worse than ad blockers?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > * And it has to come from the ad networks, because the infrastructure to make this work is already there* That really chaps my ass. These are the people keep shitting in the well, then installed a pipe to inject feces directly into the well and the groundwater - and you're telling us that the only way to deliver disinfectant and filtration systems is through that pipe, and we might as well keep using their system? > The real trouble being the more people who use that kind of thing, the more the value of adverts goes down... That does become a problem if Google is the only game in town, and you're inexplicably banned from their platform, which does tend to happen.
anilshanbhag 9y ago
If the time taken to read the buzzfeed article is the same as the high quality report, it is worth the same to an advertiser. The high quality report does good for the organization in terms of retention, a reader is likely to come back and read it if he finds good content.
- sirtaj 9y ago
  Market segmentation also routinely leads some advertisers to target the kind of people who prefer high quality reporting. Economist vs Daily Mail, as an analogy.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  What you're describing is exactly the problem. The high quality report has to hope to survive on secondary effects (which don't work), unlike the junk-food reporting whose cost is paid for by the single viewing. This is what every online newspaper has been saying for over a decade as they saw this problem approaching and didn't have a way to solve it. You can't survive this way in the extremely efficient web. Either top quality content needs to be able to pay for itself (ie charge more), or you're left with only two successful business models: make junk-food content, or off load your content creation to people willing to do it essentially for free as a hobby. Neither of those are good destinations for the web. They work in niches, but not across the board. Ex. I don't want my newspaper to consist of only volunteer journalists doing a bit here and there in their spare time.
wand3r 9y ago
Brave Software
- youdontknowtho 9y ago
  I'm also a fan of what Brave is doing.
- ElijahLynn 9y ago
  +100 I was a Google Contributor user/paying subscriber for quite a while. It works to some degree. But Brave is superior and is the best thing to happen to the web since ads.
  - a2decrow 9y ago
    > is the best thing to happen to the web since ads. Ads are the worst thing that happened to the web.
Sir_Substance 9y ago
>A model like this is necessary to support quality content online. It's totally not. People essentially enjoy creating and sharing, and love putting up quality content about things they truly give a shit about. The internet was built on people writing massive forums posts about completely stripping down Kawasaki motorbike engines, and hosting their own websites where they ramble about conditional probability. Wikipedia was written by unpaid but enthusiastic curators, and no one got paid for uploading popular Youtube videos until long after it was already a staple of the internet. I totally and utterly refute your statement. The world came to the internet for the content that people made for free, because it was the best. It's still the best. After all, you're here reading the comments on hacker news, which we are all freely contributing too with no expectation of compensation. Quality online content will not vanish if online advertising fails, because quality online content is posted by people who first and foremost /want to post content/. It'll move to different kinds of websites depending on how people want to access content at the time, but it will still be here, just as it always has been. What will vanish is all the mediocre spacefilling bullshit. The stuff so dull you _must_ pay someone to write it because no one would do it for fun or kudos.
- jevgeni 9y ago
  So who pays for the servers?
  - Kostic 9y ago
    Enthusiastic individuals. I personally have content which I host on Digital Ocean droplets and which do not generate any kind of revenue for me.
    - jbreckmckye 9y ago
      And who pays for the investigative reports? Who pays for the academics who spend their lifetimes researching the field we're reading about? Who pays salaries so the best people can make a living doing what they're truly great at? Who makes enough money to get big and old enough to gain a reputation? Without which, the news is a hail of unsubstantiated bulletins from semianonymous writers, a wilderness of mirrors and fake news amped up to eleven? Believing that we can make content totally free is utopian. You might as well ask why to bother paying software engineers large salaries when open source software exists. In a world where content is free, all that happens is that newspapers become the organs of plutocrats and political groups. If you want to imagine how the internet looks when content is totally free, imagine a Facebook news feed written by the Koch brothers.
FroshKiller 9y ago
I think you're conflating the Web and the commercial portion of the Web.
- criddell 9y ago
  It's pretty clear that he's talking about the display ad supported portion of the web.
sp33k3rph433k 9y ago
There's something I'm working on that's essentially a paypal button, but acts as a little widget on the site. I'm still in the testing phases of it, but a lot of people that I've talked to have said "Yes, I'd pay $1-3 to a site that I visit regularly if it didn't have ads" https://www.trussapp.com/ https://www.trussapp.com/ for the curious (it's still just a hair away from being a beta product, so keep that in mind)

mathw 9y ago

And it has to come from the ad networks, because the infrastructure to make this work is already there - hopefully the ultimate form of this wouldn't require site admins to really do anything special, other than twiddling a few settings in their Google advertising accounts. The real trouble being the more people who use that kind of thing, the more the value of adverts goes down...

BoiledCabbage 9y ago
> And it has to come from the ad networks That is a truth. You need to already have the infra to make this change. I think it'd be too much to both successfully grow a business and try to change browsing behavior at once. > ...The more people who use that kind of thing, the more the value of adverts goes down... Not necessarily a bad thing. If the value of adverts drops, and this is a well known alternative it provides even more incentive to move to model where there is still money to be made. Not to mention there probably is a bit of "recapture". Of people who ran ad-blockers for the experience (ie zero-revenue providers) who are willing to pay for content. Similar to people who torrented, but instead became Netflix/Hulu subscribers when it became an option.
kbob 9y ago
I'm not seeing an issue. How is it worse than ad blockers?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> * And it has to come from the ad networks, because the infrastructure to make this work is already there* That really chaps my ass. These are the people keep shitting in the well, then installed a pipe to inject feces directly into the well and the groundwater - and you're telling us that the only way to deliver disinfectant and filtration systems is through that pipe, and we might as well keep using their system? > The real trouble being the more people who use that kind of thing, the more the value of adverts goes down... That does become a problem if Google is the only game in town, and you're inexplicably banned from their platform, which does tend to happen.

anilshanbhag 9y ago

If the time taken to read the buzzfeed article is the same as the high quality report, it is worth the same to an advertiser. The high quality report does good for the organization in terms of retention, a reader is likely to come back and read it if he finds good content.

sirtaj 9y ago
Market segmentation also routinely leads some advertisers to target the kind of people who prefer high quality reporting. Economist vs Daily Mail, as an analogy.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
BoiledCabbage 9y ago
What you're describing is exactly the problem. The high quality report has to hope to survive on secondary effects (which don't work), unlike the junk-food reporting whose cost is paid for by the single viewing. This is what every online newspaper has been saying for over a decade as they saw this problem approaching and didn't have a way to solve it. You can't survive this way in the extremely efficient web. Either top quality content needs to be able to pay for itself (ie charge more), or you're left with only two successful business models: make junk-food content, or off load your content creation to people willing to do it essentially for free as a hobby. Neither of those are good destinations for the web. They work in niches, but not across the board. Ex. I don't want my newspaper to consist of only volunteer journalists doing a bit here and there in their spare time.

wand3r 9y ago

Brave Software

youdontknowtho 9y ago
I'm also a fan of what Brave is doing.
ElijahLynn 9y ago
+100 I was a Google Contributor user/paying subscriber for quite a while. It works to some degree. But Brave is superior and is the best thing to happen to the web since ads.
- a2decrow 9y ago
  > is the best thing to happen to the web since ads. Ads are the worst thing that happened to the web.

Sir_Substance 9y ago

>A model like this is necessary to support quality content online. It's totally not. People essentially enjoy creating and sharing, and love putting up quality content about things they truly give a shit about. The internet was built on people writing massive forums posts about completely stripping down Kawasaki motorbike engines, and hosting their own websites where they ramble about conditional probability. Wikipedia was written by unpaid but enthusiastic curators, and no one got paid for uploading popular Youtube videos until long after it was already a staple of the internet. I totally and utterly refute your statement. The world came to the internet for the content that people made for free, because it was the best. It's still the best. After all, you're here reading the comments on hacker news, which we are all freely contributing too with no expectation of compensation. Quality online content will not vanish if online advertising fails, because quality online content is posted by people who first and foremost /want to post content/. It'll move to different kinds of websites depending on how people want to access content at the time, but it will still be here, just as it always has been. What will vanish is all the mediocre spacefilling bullshit. The stuff so dull you _must_ pay someone to write it because no one would do it for fun or kudos.

jevgeni 9y ago
So who pays for the servers?
- Kostic 9y ago
  Enthusiastic individuals. I personally have content which I host on Digital Ocean droplets and which do not generate any kind of revenue for me.
  - jbreckmckye 9y ago
    And who pays for the investigative reports? Who pays for the academics who spend their lifetimes researching the field we're reading about? Who pays salaries so the best people can make a living doing what they're truly great at? Who makes enough money to get big and old enough to gain a reputation? Without which, the news is a hail of unsubstantiated bulletins from semianonymous writers, a wilderness of mirrors and fake news amped up to eleven? Believing that we can make content totally free is utopian. You might as well ask why to bother paying software engineers large salaries when open source software exists. In a world where content is free, all that happens is that newspapers become the organs of plutocrats and political groups. If you want to imagine how the internet looks when content is totally free, imagine a Facebook news feed written by the Koch brothers.

FroshKiller 9y ago

I think you're conflating the Web and the commercial portion of the Web.

criddell 9y ago
It's pretty clear that he's talking about the display ad supported portion of the web.

sp33k3rph433k 9y ago

There's something I'm working on that's essentially a paypal button, but acts as a little widget on the site. I'm still in the testing phases of it, but a lot of people that I've talked to have said "Yes, I'd pay $1-3 to a site that I visit regularly if it didn't have ads" https://www.trussapp.com/ https://www.trussapp.com/ for the curious (it's still just a hair away from being a beta product, so keep that in mind)