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There has been a LOT of effort put behind micro transactions for publishing, from companies that have all the resources and incentive in the world, like Google.

There has been a LOT of effort put behind micro transactions for publishing, from companies that have all the resources and incentive in the world, like Google. The market simply doesn't want it. The average consumer isn't remotely rational enough to amortize a subscription cost and compare it to a unit cost. The way they process the incentives of a subscription is more like: "once you've reached the threshold where you consider the subscription worth it, completely forget about the fact that you're paying it for the purposes of assessing costs". Micro-transactions, even for tiny unit prices, feel like a cost upon every use. You or I may prefer the microtransaction model to free with ads or subscription-based, but I suspect there's a lot about the market that we'd prefer was different, and that's because we're not typical of the market.

reitanqild 9y ago
> There has been a LOT of effort put behind micro transactions for publishing, from companies that have all the resources and incentive in the world, like Google. I feel I used to follow Google quite closely before and I cannot remember seing any hints of this. My feeling has rather been that any form for paying has been looked at as second class compared to ads at that company. Youtube Red still isn't available here and I haven't heard a thing about the idea they had last year that we could pay to avoid ads. Do you have any pointers?
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  They tried several variations for Google Contributor, each less appealing than the last. More recently they introduced Subscribe With Google.
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    I never got the chance to try. Would anyone care to describe why it wasn't great? (Short summary of why I think it should be great: I want to support the sites and blogs I read. I don't want ads as they are still next to useless.)
    - wutbrodo 9y ago
      From looking at it, it seems like it's active only on a really tiny number of sites.
      - reitanqild 9y ago
        If I understand you correctly that means you'd pay but get ads anyway on most pages? That would explain why it didn't succeed. In fact it would seem like it was rigged to fail which wouldn't surprise me as both Google and Facebook seems to prefer ad revenue over payments.
        wutbrodo 9y ago
        > both Google and Facebook seems to prefer ad revenue over payments. This is exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory mindset I was talking about in my upthread comment. What reason could they have for preferring ads, given the extra risks (esp legislative) and PR issues associated with it? As I said, Google (I can't personally speak to Facebook) has put effort behind getting micropayments off the ground in a couple different formats, but there're substantial hurdles and substantial pushback on the part of publishers. The fact that they're not jeopardizing existing revenue by forcing pubs to do things they don't want to doesn't mean that they prefer advertising revenue per se.
        reitanqild 9y ago
        Thanks for your reply. It was really interesting. > This is exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory mindset I was talking about in my upthread comment. This is however unneccessary IMO. Im referring to observed behaviour. I might be wrong but calling it a conspiracy-theory mindset doesn't help. > What reason could they have for preferring ads, given the extra risks (esp legislative) and PR issues associated with it? I don't know but if I had to guess Googles infrastructure and organization is heavily optimized for it. > As I said, Google (I can't personally speak to Facebook) has put effort behind getting micropayments off the ground in a couple different formats, but there're substantial hurdles and substantial pushback on the part of publishers. Ok, so now we are finally talking. So the reason I couldn't "buy the ad spots" and sponsor writers of tech blogs (and here I'm referring to personal blogs, not news outlets dressed up as one) was because "publishers"? Do we really think blog owners with google ads would complain if parts of their revenue came from users who hadn't had to suffer ads? I can see one issue here and that is a lot of sites would probably try double dipping by trying to install a second ad network. I'm honest but a bit annoyed here: I guess it is because Google used to be focused on creating good products for me but now it is about whatever publishers want. Edit: also this doesn't explain Google's hesitation to introduce Youtube red, does it? Or are publishers also active in deciding what Google does on their own properties too?
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  Eep, I may have inadvertently been referring to information about internal trials. Suffice it to say that a public offering isn't the first step to trying out a product direction, nor is it the only way to get feedback from the market (given that a tried and failed public product incurs substantial costs). EDIT: thanks to the downthread comment, I see that the pilot I was thinking of apparently became Contributor. This is pretty much exactly what many in this thread are talking about, with the significant difference being that there are few participating sites, and the ones on there are generally targeted at the kinds of demographics who care an unusual amount about avoiding ads. The reason there's barely any buy-in on the content provider side is because most sites know that their readers wouldn't like it.

reitanqild 9y ago

> There has been a LOT of effort put behind micro transactions for publishing, from companies that have all the resources and incentive in the world, like Google. I feel I used to follow Google quite closely before and I cannot remember seing any hints of this. My feeling has rather been that any form for paying has been looked at as second class compared to ads at that company. Youtube Red still isn't available here and I haven't heard a thing about the idea they had last year that we could pay to avoid ads. Do you have any pointers?

jacques_chester 9y ago
They tried several variations for Google Contributor, each less appealing than the last. More recently they introduced Subscribe With Google.
- reitanqild 9y ago
  I never got the chance to try. Would anyone care to describe why it wasn't great? (Short summary of why I think it should be great: I want to support the sites and blogs I read. I don't want ads as they are still next to useless.)
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    From looking at it, it seems like it's active only on a really tiny number of sites.
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      If I understand you correctly that means you'd pay but get ads anyway on most pages? That would explain why it didn't succeed. In fact it would seem like it was rigged to fail which wouldn't surprise me as both Google and Facebook seems to prefer ad revenue over payments.
      - wutbrodo 9y ago
        > both Google and Facebook seems to prefer ad revenue over payments. This is exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory mindset I was talking about in my upthread comment. What reason could they have for preferring ads, given the extra risks (esp legislative) and PR issues associated with it? As I said, Google (I can't personally speak to Facebook) has put effort behind getting micropayments off the ground in a couple different formats, but there're substantial hurdles and substantial pushback on the part of publishers. The fact that they're not jeopardizing existing revenue by forcing pubs to do things they don't want to doesn't mean that they prefer advertising revenue per se.
        reitanqild 9y ago
        Thanks for your reply. It was really interesting. > This is exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory mindset I was talking about in my upthread comment. This is however unneccessary IMO. Im referring to observed behaviour. I might be wrong but calling it a conspiracy-theory mindset doesn't help. > What reason could they have for preferring ads, given the extra risks (esp legislative) and PR issues associated with it? I don't know but if I had to guess Googles infrastructure and organization is heavily optimized for it. > As I said, Google (I can't personally speak to Facebook) has put effort behind getting micropayments off the ground in a couple different formats, but there're substantial hurdles and substantial pushback on the part of publishers. Ok, so now we are finally talking. So the reason I couldn't "buy the ad spots" and sponsor writers of tech blogs (and here I'm referring to personal blogs, not news outlets dressed up as one) was because "publishers"? Do we really think blog owners with google ads would complain if parts of their revenue came from users who hadn't had to suffer ads? I can see one issue here and that is a lot of sites would probably try double dipping by trying to install a second ad network. I'm honest but a bit annoyed here: I guess it is because Google used to be focused on creating good products for me but now it is about whatever publishers want. Edit: also this doesn't explain Google's hesitation to introduce Youtube red, does it? Or are publishers also active in deciding what Google does on their own properties too?
wutbrodo 9y ago
Eep, I may have inadvertently been referring to information about internal trials. Suffice it to say that a public offering isn't the first step to trying out a product direction, nor is it the only way to get feedback from the market (given that a tried and failed public product incurs substantial costs). EDIT: thanks to the downthread comment, I see that the pilot I was thinking of apparently became Contributor. This is pretty much exactly what many in this thread are talking about, with the significant difference being that there are few participating sites, and the ones on there are generally targeted at the kinds of demographics who care an unusual amount about avoiding ads. The reason there's barely any buy-in on the content provider side is because most sites know that their readers wouldn't like it.