7 ms·

Survey results: How much would you pay for Facebook without ads?

14 points by kawera 9y ago

jdlyga 9y ago
How about data collection free? I don't care about ads, those are easily taken care of.
- pcunite 9y ago
  I wonder, will I ever have the right to be digitally invisible (except for my consent)? So, if a FB user posts a picture of me, their service can determine, "This person does not yet exist in our system. We do not display images of people without their consent. Thank you for using FB."
- nickthegreek 9y ago
  Agreed. I have way less issue with them serving ads to the visitor than the tracking of a user across the internet.
SCdF 9y ago
> Facebook generates about $9 a month per user in the U.S. by targeting you with ads. That is so much higher than I thought it would be.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  IIRC, that was for one particular quarter and during that quarter ARPU was apparently higher than average.
  - mfoy_ 9y ago
    Even if that number is 3x higher than average, it's still an order of magnitude higher than I would have guessed.
  - nopriorarrests 9y ago
    Facebook ARPU for US users in Q4 2017 was $26 (highest ever). $9 more sounds like an old stats or average for couple of years.
czardoz 9y ago
The real question is, would you pay for Facebook at all?
- justadudeama 9y ago
  Also, the people with the money to pay for Facebook are also probably the ones that have the money advertisers are after.
watertom 9y ago
Advertisers have succeeded for years and years using Billboard, Radio, TV, Newspaper, and magazines with very limited viewer demographics. I don't understand why we've decided as a society that the advertisers DESERVE all the data they want. Better serving the needs of the consumer is complete joke, it's all about control. This is one of the few area where the government, meaning you and I, NEEDS to step up and protect the citizens. ALL data collection should be opt in, I should know what data they collect, who they share it with, and for what purpose. I should have the options to opt out and have all my data deleted.
- pcunite 9y ago
  I should know what data they collect I agree, and further more I decide what that information is and until I do the default is basically nil. We the people determine how this game is played, not "Advertisers". I should have a Digital BILL OF RIGHTS.
- ahoy 9y ago
  >This is one of the few area where the government, meaning you and I, NEEDS to step up and protect the citizens. I agree that regulation is necessary here, but I'm fascinated that you think tech/data privacy is a special case. Businesses in all sorts of industries are prone to abusing and mistreating people.
  - watertom 9y ago
    I single out tech/data because of the insidiousness nature of the situation. Take a look at the Terms of service for Grammerly as an example: By uploading or entering any User Content, you give Grammarly (and those it works with) a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and fully-paid, transferable and sublicensable, perpetual, and irrevocable license to copy, store and use your User Content (and, if you are an Authorized User, your Enterprise Subscriber’s User Content) in connection with the provision of the Software and the Services and to improve the algorithms underlying the Software and the Services. IF you have Grammerly plugin in your browser they capture EVERYTHING you type into a browser, and you've given them all of the rights to that data, for which they can sublicense at fee. I can't think of a non tech/data situation that has the breadth and reach that tech/data area's have.
panarky 9y ago
Maybe Facebook should pay you for your data.
- giarc 9y ago
  They do, in the form of photo storage, messaging platform, event/calendar planning, etc etc etc.
  - teaneedz 9y ago
    No, that's the window dressing and free samples to attract my attention and eyeballs. Many didn't really understand that their digital pockets were being picked as they walked around Facebook's store—and even after leaving the store. Sure Facebook could charge me to come into their store, but does anyone really believe they will stop pickpocketing my digital wallet? They might eliminate ads at first, before one day allowing a few select ads from select partners to appear again. They will still be collecting data to monetize another way.
wombatpm 9y ago
I'm for a 60-40 split. Facebook can keep 60% of the revenue I generate them, I get 40% of the take. I might even use facebook more.
- giarc 9y ago
  Technically you are getting a split because you get the service. However, if you wanted a revenue split, Facebook would have to reduce the service you get, therefore making Facebook less interesting.
- matte_black 9y ago
  This is the typical penny wise and dollar foolish mindset. The average user makes Facebook something like $21 a year. That’s like $1.75 a month, which would give you $0.70 after their 60% take. 70 cents. Not even a dollar. Not even including taxes yet. After taxes you are likely making something like 52 cents. If you are that pressed for money, I recommend Mechanical Turk. You will make in an hour what Facebook makes you in a year. Or be a panhandler, you will make even more.
Panino 9y ago
> 77 percent would stick to the regular ads version, while 23 percent said they’d pay not to have ads. If/When 77% of its users leave Facebook, a substantial portion of the remaining 23% would be less inclined to pay for using the service. Maybe it would be worthwhile to explore a freemium model where a certain amount of storage (photos, videos, text) is free but beyond it costs. Or it could be interesting to turn FB into a sort of MMORPG where certain activity costs or credits in some way. Without changing its path FB set to follow MySpace.
trisimix 9y ago
Ill pay 30$ a month for the right to privacy
Sharlin 9y ago
I pay ~€10 a month for Spotify, Netflix, etc. I'd pay the same for Facebook (as long as they also kept the regular ad-based service so people wouldn't leave en masse).
- dylan604 9y ago
  You would pay that, but what if you were married with 2+ teenage kids all with an account? Would ~40/month be worth it?
jasode 9y ago
Somewhat related survey: 70% won't even pay a measly 8 cents per month to avoid ads.[1] The random suggestions out there saying Facebook could theoretically charge users $5/month for zero ads is naive I think. Also, a general point about surveys... Asking people about hypothetical payments usually overestimates what they would actually do with real money. Surveys asking factual questions like "how many children do you have?" yield more accurate results than "would you pay $9 for product X?" E.g. the article says 25% would pay $6/month for no ads. Probably the more realistic answer is to divide that by 10 and estimate that only 2.5% would actually pay that subscription amount to Facebook. [1] https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-owners-wont-pay-even-1-to-avoid-ads/ https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-owners...
fataliss 9y ago
I personally would never pay for Facebook, since I don't get much use of it anyway. It's a nice to have, I check it every other month to see if anything important happened in my extended friends' circle, and that's about it. I also know for a fact that while I hate ads, I hate wasting my money even more. Browsing FB with an ad blocker makes it essentially ad free. (At least for the main pages) The only concern left is data gathering/privacy. Assuming that FB isn't lying about selling data to anybody, then I'm ok with my data just sitting around on their servers, informing ads I never see. Now for a heavy user, I could see the appeal of paying to remove adds (ads between & injected in videos seems annoying) but I highly doubt that the math would checkout for FB. These users are the most engaged ones and probably make for the bulk of their ads revenue. They'd be foolish to offer them a small $5/m membership and lose all ad revenue from them. All that to say: Since the low value customers are probably unwilling to pay and the high value ones would need to pay a lot to make up for ad revenue loss, I don't believe there ever will be a successful pay to remove ad model on Facebook.
naravara 9y ago
This kind of misses the point. Facebook designed its product, services, and its entire business model around the need for serving you ads. The idea of a Facebook "without ads" almost seems like a contradiction in terms, because if the need to serve you ads wasn't baked right into the service's design it would never look or work the way it does. I may be willing to pay some nominal amount of money for a service that fulfills Facebook's ostensible mission of "connecting people" (however vague that is). This would probably have wound up looking a lot more like Facebook's original iteration, which was functionally just a personal homepage and message board. A service that made it free to view, like, and share content but charged a fee on the order of a postage stamp to post stuff (up to a certain amount of stuff) would probably have much less reach, but a way way waaaay higher signal to noice ratio. I'd happily pay $0.45 cents to send a party invitation or share a photo album to a service like that assuming we don't have some race-to-the-bottom situation where nobody will pay.
- nimblegorilla 9y ago
  I agree Facebook is currently designed around serving ads. But it didn't start that way and I don't think most people use Facebook to watch ads.
- teaneedz 9y ago
  Not just ads — highly targeted ads based on pervasive tracking. It didn't have to be this way but most of tech jumped onto this bandwagon—or maybe the data brokers and ad tech types magnified their snake oil benefits just enough to fuel this beast. The issue is so much larger than Facebook. It's good to see it get attention though.
robotsquidward 9y ago
I wouldn't pay anything to Facebook for their service, but I would pay for a Facebook competitor who offered a similar type of service. If only out of spite.
sorokod 9y ago
"Facebook generates about $9 a month per user in the U.S. by targeting you with ads." What does this mean? FB gets paid on average this amount per user / month? Users on average spend this amount following an advert presented by FB? Something else?
mmmBacon 9y ago
People tend to forget that Facebook and Google are massive physical machines for computing and networking that require extensive physical infrastructure to operate. The reality is that a user subscription model would not generate enough revenue to support the infrastructure required by something like Facebook or Google.

14 points by kawera 9y ago

jdlyga 9y ago

How about data collection free? I don't care about ads, those are easily taken care of.

pcunite 9y ago
I wonder, will I ever have the right to be digitally invisible (except for my consent)? So, if a FB user posts a picture of me, their service can determine, "This person does not yet exist in our system. We do not display images of people without their consent. Thank you for using FB."
nickthegreek 9y ago
Agreed. I have way less issue with them serving ads to the visitor than the tracking of a user across the internet.

SCdF 9y ago

> Facebook generates about $9 a month per user in the U.S. by targeting you with ads. That is so much higher than I thought it would be.

jlgaddis 9y ago
IIRC, that was for one particular quarter and during that quarter ARPU was apparently higher than average.
- mfoy_ 9y ago
  Even if that number is 3x higher than average, it's still an order of magnitude higher than I would have guessed.
- nopriorarrests 9y ago
  Facebook ARPU for US users in Q4 2017 was $26 (highest ever). $9 more sounds like an old stats or average for couple of years.

czardoz 9y ago

The real question is, would you pay for Facebook at all?

justadudeama 9y ago
Also, the people with the money to pay for Facebook are also probably the ones that have the money advertisers are after.

watertom 9y ago

Advertisers have succeeded for years and years using Billboard, Radio, TV, Newspaper, and magazines with very limited viewer demographics. I don't understand why we've decided as a society that the advertisers DESERVE all the data they want. Better serving the needs of the consumer is complete joke, it's all about control. This is one of the few area where the government, meaning you and I, NEEDS to step up and protect the citizens. ALL data collection should be opt in, I should know what data they collect, who they share it with, and for what purpose. I should have the options to opt out and have all my data deleted.

pcunite 9y ago
I should know what data they collect I agree, and further more I decide what that information is and until I do the default is basically nil. We the people determine how this game is played, not "Advertisers". I should have a Digital BILL OF RIGHTS.
ahoy 9y ago
>This is one of the few area where the government, meaning you and I, NEEDS to step up and protect the citizens. I agree that regulation is necessary here, but I'm fascinated that you think tech/data privacy is a special case. Businesses in all sorts of industries are prone to abusing and mistreating people.
- watertom 9y ago
  I single out tech/data because of the insidiousness nature of the situation. Take a look at the Terms of service for Grammerly as an example: By uploading or entering any User Content, you give Grammarly (and those it works with) a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and fully-paid, transferable and sublicensable, perpetual, and irrevocable license to copy, store and use your User Content (and, if you are an Authorized User, your Enterprise Subscriber’s User Content) in connection with the provision of the Software and the Services and to improve the algorithms underlying the Software and the Services. IF you have Grammerly plugin in your browser they capture EVERYTHING you type into a browser, and you've given them all of the rights to that data, for which they can sublicense at fee. I can't think of a non tech/data situation that has the breadth and reach that tech/data area's have.

panarky 9y ago

Maybe Facebook should pay you for your data.

giarc 9y ago
They do, in the form of photo storage, messaging platform, event/calendar planning, etc etc etc.
- teaneedz 9y ago
  No, that's the window dressing and free samples to attract my attention and eyeballs. Many didn't really understand that their digital pockets were being picked as they walked around Facebook's store—and even after leaving the store. Sure Facebook could charge me to come into their store, but does anyone really believe they will stop pickpocketing my digital wallet? They might eliminate ads at first, before one day allowing a few select ads from select partners to appear again. They will still be collecting data to monetize another way.

wombatpm 9y ago

I'm for a 60-40 split. Facebook can keep 60% of the revenue I generate them, I get 40% of the take. I might even use facebook more.

giarc 9y ago
Technically you are getting a split because you get the service. However, if you wanted a revenue split, Facebook would have to reduce the service you get, therefore making Facebook less interesting.
matte_black 9y ago
This is the typical penny wise and dollar foolish mindset. The average user makes Facebook something like $21 a year. That’s like $1.75 a month, which would give you $0.70 after their 60% take. 70 cents. Not even a dollar. Not even including taxes yet. After taxes you are likely making something like 52 cents. If you are that pressed for money, I recommend Mechanical Turk. You will make in an hour what Facebook makes you in a year. Or be a panhandler, you will make even more.

Panino 9y ago

> 77 percent would stick to the regular ads version, while 23 percent said they’d pay not to have ads. If/When 77% of its users leave Facebook, a substantial portion of the remaining 23% would be less inclined to pay for using the service. Maybe it would be worthwhile to explore a freemium model where a certain amount of storage (photos, videos, text) is free but beyond it costs. Or it could be interesting to turn FB into a sort of MMORPG where certain activity costs or credits in some way. Without changing its path FB set to follow MySpace.

trisimix 9y ago

Ill pay 30$ a month for the right to privacy

Sharlin 9y ago

I pay ~€10 a month for Spotify, Netflix, etc. I'd pay the same for Facebook (as long as they also kept the regular ad-based service so people wouldn't leave en masse).

dylan604 9y ago
You would pay that, but what if you were married with 2+ teenage kids all with an account? Would ~40/month be worth it?

jasode 9y ago

Somewhat related survey: 70% won't even pay a measly 8 cents per month to avoid ads.[1] The random suggestions out there saying Facebook could theoretically charge users $5/month for zero ads is naive I think. Also, a general point about surveys... Asking people about hypothetical payments usually overestimates what they would actually do with real money. Surveys asking factual questions like "how many children do you have?" yield more accurate results than "would you pay $9 for product X?" E.g. the article says 25% would pay $6/month for no ads. Probably the more realistic answer is to divide that by 10 and estimate that only 2.5% would actually pay that subscription amount to Facebook. [1] https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-owners-wont-pay-even-1-to-avoid-ads/ https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-owners...

fataliss 9y ago

I personally would never pay for Facebook, since I don't get much use of it anyway. It's a nice to have, I check it every other month to see if anything important happened in my extended friends' circle, and that's about it. I also know for a fact that while I hate ads, I hate wasting my money even more. Browsing FB with an ad blocker makes it essentially ad free. (At least for the main pages) The only concern left is data gathering/privacy. Assuming that FB isn't lying about selling data to anybody, then I'm ok with my data just sitting around on their servers, informing ads I never see. Now for a heavy user, I could see the appeal of paying to remove adds (ads between & injected in videos seems annoying) but I highly doubt that the math would checkout for FB. These users are the most engaged ones and probably make for the bulk of their ads revenue. They'd be foolish to offer them a small $5/m membership and lose all ad revenue from them. All that to say: Since the low value customers are probably unwilling to pay and the high value ones would need to pay a lot to make up for ad revenue loss, I don't believe there ever will be a successful pay to remove ad model on Facebook.

naravara 9y ago

This kind of misses the point. Facebook designed its product, services, and its entire business model around the need for serving you ads. The idea of a Facebook "without ads" almost seems like a contradiction in terms, because if the need to serve you ads wasn't baked right into the service's design it would never look or work the way it does. I may be willing to pay some nominal amount of money for a service that fulfills Facebook's ostensible mission of "connecting people" (however vague that is). This would probably have wound up looking a lot more like Facebook's original iteration, which was functionally just a personal homepage and message board. A service that made it free to view, like, and share content but charged a fee on the order of a postage stamp to post stuff (up to a certain amount of stuff) would probably have much less reach, but a way way waaaay higher signal to noice ratio. I'd happily pay $0.45 cents to send a party invitation or share a photo album to a service like that assuming we don't have some race-to-the-bottom situation where nobody will pay.

nimblegorilla 9y ago
I agree Facebook is currently designed around serving ads. But it didn't start that way and I don't think most people use Facebook to watch ads.
teaneedz 9y ago
Not just ads — highly targeted ads based on pervasive tracking. It didn't have to be this way but most of tech jumped onto this bandwagon—or maybe the data brokers and ad tech types magnified their snake oil benefits just enough to fuel this beast. The issue is so much larger than Facebook. It's good to see it get attention though.

robotsquidward 9y ago

I wouldn't pay anything to Facebook for their service, but I would pay for a Facebook competitor who offered a similar type of service. If only out of spite.

sorokod 9y ago

"Facebook generates about $9 a month per user in the U.S. by targeting you with ads." What does this mean? FB gets paid on average this amount per user / month? Users on average spend this amount following an advert presented by FB? Something else?

mmmBacon 9y ago

People tend to forget that Facebook and Google are massive physical machines for computing and networking that require extensive physical infrastructure to operate. The reality is that a user subscription model would not generate enough revenue to support the infrastructure required by something like Facebook or Google.