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I disagree with the author that subscriptions are objectively and inherently the superior model for web monetization. An unsung virtue of the ad-driven web it's

I disagree with the author that subscriptions are objectively and inherently the superior model for web monetization. An unsung virtue of the ad-driven web it's is inclusiveness and strong worldwide redistribution effects. Everybody sees the ads, however the actual value of a pair of eyeballs is widely variable, by orders of magnitude so. It's therefore profitable to make the content free and distribute it as far as possible, to have the best chance of catching high value visitors that covert to ad action and revenue. The net effect is that large swaths of society and indeed the world get the internet services for free, subsidized by purchases made by richer westerners, purchases and services they themselves could never afford. This model works well with the economic structure of web publishing, where marginal cost of serving an existing page to a new customer is essentially zero - even for the obese, media rich pages the author is referring to. Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases. There is a clearly defined model of customer, say, those living in the middle class of an OECD country, that is targeted to maximize revenue, and a paywall is put in place that excludes 95% of the rest of the world. These are people for which 9$ might represent a tenth of their wage, and who might not even have access to modern banking through which to purchase internet services. The open web was created by hacker ethos, but paid for using ads; a flat tax against widely variable income is strongly inequalitarian and exclusionary.

kazinator 8y ago
> There is a clearly defined model of customer, say, those living in the middle class of an OECD country And, of course, that must be the very individual who wants those "immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format."
anarazel 8y ago
> An unsung virtue of the ad-driven web it's is inclusiveness and strong worldwide redistribution effects. Everybody sees the ads, however the actual value of a pair of eyeballs is widely variable, by orders of magnitude so. It's therefore profitable to make the content free and distribute it as far as possible, to have the best chance of catching high value visitors that covert to ad action and revenue. > Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases I think this largely disregards the effects of targeting. A lot of the things (payday loans as the prime example) advertised to people less well off are reverse redistribution, exploiting the financial situation / needs of viewers.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  Payday loans are an extreme case. I very much doubt that there enough such things to completely dilute the redistributive effect of ad funding.
  - nojvek 8y ago
    Payday loans are extreme case because it’s the last option for a poor person. A poor persons usually has little family/friends or they are poor too. Banks won’t give them loans. If they are stuck in deep dark mud, the only way out is payday loan. Sure, some outright gamble their life and their should be some low against it. But paydays are taking huge risks in funding them, therefore their higher fees as insurance.
    - jimmy1 8y ago
      > Payday loans are extreme case because it’s the last option for a poor person. This is a false dilemma. There are many options before succumbing to a payday loan. Depending on where you live, there are a myriad of housing assistance, energy assistance, medical bills assistance, and food assistance programs on the city, county, state, and federal levels. Heck, even bankruptcy can be better in some situations. It really does depend on the situation. The other problem here is availability of information. Everyone is 100% aware of payday loans and the temporary relief it can provide you (advertising), not everyone is aware of the upwards of 20+ programs someone in need can participate in, and it can be exhausting to apply and follow up on everything. Again, the reason the payday loan industry is so successful is they are preying on human nature to take the quick and easy way, but to say they are some sort of last option is not true at all.
      - josefresco 8y ago
        It's usually the last (legal) option for "straight cash". Most public assistance programs have some sort of condition to the assistance they provide.
maltalex 8y ago
> Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases. No one is saying that the fee should be flat. There are ways of selling roughly the same service for different prices - just look at air travel.
- cornholio 8y ago
  Can you cite an example of such tiered subscriptions used by an important media outlet? Price discrimination is not always possible or efficient.
dabockster 8y ago
Maybe it's possible to create a sort of tiered system. The latest news and top stories are always free, but the detailed analysis and exposes (the stuff that usually wins awards) require a subscription. On the more local news level, maybe require a subscription to read the restaurant reviews or something. I'm not going to pretend that this is the end all solution. But both the open web and journalism cannot survive in the present state. We have to adapt.
- doh 8y ago
  Gigaom tried that before, but it didn't work that well. Very few people care about the topic that they will purchase the analysis. Not enough for the business to be sustainable. Seems like there is a market for deeper analysis done stratchery, the information and couple of others, but it barely sustains a few writers, hardly able to compete with the large scale newsrooms of WSJ, WaPo, NYT, ...
  - dabockster 8y ago
    > Gigaom The issue with your observations is that Gigaom isn't known widely outside of big tech. So I don't feel it's fair to compare their failure to the possibility of a mainstream outlet attempting this.
    - doh 8y ago
      Agree, they weren't known outside of big tech. My thinking is, that if they couldn't get it to work in a specific category, then it would be even harder to make it work in more general one. In general, a very few people care about any topic enough to purchase deeper analysis of it. I'm not sure that this would work as a business model in general.

kazinator 8y ago

> There is a clearly defined model of customer, say, those living in the middle class of an OECD country And, of course, that must be the very individual who wants those "immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format."

anarazel 8y ago

> An unsung virtue of the ad-driven web it's is inclusiveness and strong worldwide redistribution effects. Everybody sees the ads, however the actual value of a pair of eyeballs is widely variable, by orders of magnitude so. It's therefore profitable to make the content free and distribute it as far as possible, to have the best chance of catching high value visitors that covert to ad action and revenue. > Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases I think this largely disregards the effects of targeting. A lot of the things (payday loans as the prime example) advertised to people less well off are reverse redistribution, exploiting the financial situation / needs of viewers.

fauigerzigerk 8y ago
Payday loans are an extreme case. I very much doubt that there enough such things to completely dilute the redistributive effect of ad funding.
- nojvek 8y ago
  Payday loans are extreme case because it’s the last option for a poor person. A poor persons usually has little family/friends or they are poor too. Banks won’t give them loans. If they are stuck in deep dark mud, the only way out is payday loan. Sure, some outright gamble their life and their should be some low against it. But paydays are taking huge risks in funding them, therefore their higher fees as insurance.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    > Payday loans are extreme case because it’s the last option for a poor person. This is a false dilemma. There are many options before succumbing to a payday loan. Depending on where you live, there are a myriad of housing assistance, energy assistance, medical bills assistance, and food assistance programs on the city, county, state, and federal levels. Heck, even bankruptcy can be better in some situations. It really does depend on the situation. The other problem here is availability of information. Everyone is 100% aware of payday loans and the temporary relief it can provide you (advertising), not everyone is aware of the upwards of 20+ programs someone in need can participate in, and it can be exhausting to apply and follow up on everything. Again, the reason the payday loan industry is so successful is they are preying on human nature to take the quick and easy way, but to say they are some sort of last option is not true at all.
    - josefresco 8y ago
      It's usually the last (legal) option for "straight cash". Most public assistance programs have some sort of condition to the assistance they provide.

maltalex 8y ago

> Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases. No one is saying that the fee should be flat. There are ways of selling roughly the same service for different prices - just look at air travel.

cornholio 8y ago
Can you cite an example of such tiered subscriptions used by an important media outlet? Price discrimination is not always possible or efficient.

dabockster 8y ago

Maybe it's possible to create a sort of tiered system. The latest news and top stories are always free, but the detailed analysis and exposes (the stuff that usually wins awards) require a subscription. On the more local news level, maybe require a subscription to read the restaurant reviews or something. I'm not going to pretend that this is the end all solution. But both the open web and journalism cannot survive in the present state. We have to adapt.

doh 8y ago
Gigaom tried that before, but it didn't work that well. Very few people care about the topic that they will purchase the analysis. Not enough for the business to be sustainable. Seems like there is a market for deeper analysis done stratchery, the information and couple of others, but it barely sustains a few writers, hardly able to compete with the large scale newsrooms of WSJ, WaPo, NYT, ...
- dabockster 8y ago
  > Gigaom The issue with your observations is that Gigaom isn't known widely outside of big tech. So I don't feel it's fair to compare their failure to the possibility of a mainstream outlet attempting this.
  - doh 8y ago
    Agree, they weren't known outside of big tech. My thinking is, that if they couldn't get it to work in a specific category, then it would be even harder to make it work in more general one. In general, a very few people care about any topic enough to purchase deeper analysis of it. I'm not sure that this would work as a business model in general.