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Not at all. In-browser cryptomining is not even within an order of magnitude as lucrative as ads (probably not even two orders of magnitude), and users actively

Not at all. In-browser cryptomining is not even within an order of magnitude as lucrative as ads (probably not even two orders of magnitude), and users actively despise having the browser slow to a crawl because these are in the background. It's far worse for users than standard advertising.

prepend 9y ago
Even though it’s much less lucrative than ads, it can still disrupt google. It’s work examining the equivalent of mining in CPM terms to compare. But precisely why it’s less lucrative is why it’s a threat. Remember when Napster came out and the argument was “they’ll never make as much money as the record industry?” For new entrants making an order of magnitude less is perfectly fine because they are a new market. Why would they care if google loses $1B in ad revenue if they make $100M. Especially since you don’t really need a market maker like Google matching ad buyers to content makers, the $100M can go directly to content creators running sites. The payout for Adsense is super low for display. They don’t reveal the payout ratio for clicks, but I expect it’s 10-30%. So for comparison for $1B in current AdSense payout to content sites, content creators only get $100-300M based on clicks. If you replaced this with crypto miners then you only need 10-30% payout from browser miners in order for content creators to break even. But ad in all the readers who never click (like me, the ads are not relevant) this gets more attractive. If google is smart, they do recognize this as a threat.
- simias 9y ago
  Given that every day more people browse the web on relatively weaker handheld devices running on batteries I have a hard time believing that most people will be fine with having websites drain their batteries and if it becomes commonplace I expect that many people will block them. And remember that mining is effectively a zero-sum game, the more people mine the harder it becomes to mine. It effectively means that every new websites who switches to mining for monetization makes it less valuable for all the other websites already doing it since you're all sharing the same cake.
  - bitL 9y ago
    > is effectively a zero-sum game That's only true for deflationary currencies. One can conjure up an ad-replacement currency, let's call it impre$$ion, that would be inflationary and perhaps linearly related to the time spent on the page regardless of computing performance of a viewer (though some viewers might be more valuable than others, e.g. those running iOS). Then there could be a separate market/stock-exchange for impre$$ions, replacing ad income. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was in the works already.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      There'd be no reason whatsoever for such an imaginary currency to have any value.
  - prepend 9y ago
    These are good points, but the mining is really minimal. Considering that I’m content sites I run, I make less than 1 cent per visitor for an average 4 minute session. 75 of sessions are between 3-8 minutes. So I don’t need to mine a ton, just a little bit. I would actually be cool with a micro transaction program where I just paid them a penny if I thought the visit was worthwhile. I really liked the flattr model.
ballenf 9y ago
How many orders of magnitude more lucrative is cryptomining than users with adblock? Users knowingly doing cryptomining are probably in the 90%+ adoption rate neighborhood of adblock. Finally, if users had even an inkling of how their data is bought, sold and aggregated, they may very well prefer a sluggish browser. Maybe not, but it's certainly not a forgone conclusion. Many adblock users like myself would happily browse with any number of ads, if I could block the tracking by itself.

prepend 9y ago

Even though it’s much less lucrative than ads, it can still disrupt google. It’s work examining the equivalent of mining in CPM terms to compare. But precisely why it’s less lucrative is why it’s a threat. Remember when Napster came out and the argument was “they’ll never make as much money as the record industry?” For new entrants making an order of magnitude less is perfectly fine because they are a new market. Why would they care if google loses $1B in ad revenue if they make $100M. Especially since you don’t really need a market maker like Google matching ad buyers to content makers, the $100M can go directly to content creators running sites. The payout for Adsense is super low for display. They don’t reveal the payout ratio for clicks, but I expect it’s 10-30%. So for comparison for $1B in current AdSense payout to content sites, content creators only get $100-300M based on clicks. If you replaced this with crypto miners then you only need 10-30% payout from browser miners in order for content creators to break even. But ad in all the readers who never click (like me, the ads are not relevant) this gets more attractive. If google is smart, they do recognize this as a threat.

simias 9y ago
Given that every day more people browse the web on relatively weaker handheld devices running on batteries I have a hard time believing that most people will be fine with having websites drain their batteries and if it becomes commonplace I expect that many people will block them. And remember that mining is effectively a zero-sum game, the more people mine the harder it becomes to mine. It effectively means that every new websites who switches to mining for monetization makes it less valuable for all the other websites already doing it since you're all sharing the same cake.
- bitL 9y ago
  > is effectively a zero-sum game That's only true for deflationary currencies. One can conjure up an ad-replacement currency, let's call it impre$$ion, that would be inflationary and perhaps linearly related to the time spent on the page regardless of computing performance of a viewer (though some viewers might be more valuable than others, e.g. those running iOS). Then there could be a separate market/stock-exchange for impre$$ions, replacing ad income. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was in the works already.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    There'd be no reason whatsoever for such an imaginary currency to have any value.
- prepend 9y ago
  These are good points, but the mining is really minimal. Considering that I’m content sites I run, I make less than 1 cent per visitor for an average 4 minute session. 75 of sessions are between 3-8 minutes. So I don’t need to mine a ton, just a little bit. I would actually be cool with a micro transaction program where I just paid them a penny if I thought the visit was worthwhile. I really liked the flattr model.

ballenf 9y ago

How many orders of magnitude more lucrative is cryptomining than users with adblock? Users knowingly doing cryptomining are probably in the 90%+ adoption rate neighborhood of adblock. Finally, if users had even an inkling of how their data is bought, sold and aggregated, they may very well prefer a sluggish browser. Maybe not, but it's certainly not a forgone conclusion. Many adblock users like myself would happily browse with any number of ads, if I could block the tracking by itself.