4 ms·

Want to help publishers? Fund a competitor to google that either doesnt track users, or does it in an ethical way. With monopolistic google disappointing both a

Want to help publishers? Fund a competitor to google that either doesnt track users, or does it in an ethical way. With monopolistic google disappointing both advertisers and publishers by raising prices and keeping most of the profit, there is an opportunity in the market that wasn't there 10 years ago when most of their competitors gave up. Non-ad monetization models are not hindered by lack of investment or ideas, they are hindered by REGULATION. The best ideas are impossible to do with today's regulatory and fee structures, and publishers in particular cannot escape that.

zamfi 7y ago
> Non-ad monetization models are not hindered by lack of investment or ideas, they are hindered by REGULATION. The best ideas are impossible to do with today's regulatory and fee structures [...] Can you say more about this?
- buboard 7y ago
  having thousands of customers paying $0.1 per day is a huge accounting hassle. Trying to account e.g. for EU VAT is a maze of galactic proportions for a small startup. So you 'll need an intermediary who will get a cut of that income. And then you 'll occasionally be getting weird looks from banks because apparently that business model looks suspicious ( i've had my bank deny me services because we do virtual currency sales in game - through an intermediary). There is also no frictionless way to do it: payments should ideally be integrated in browsers, and people should be able to pay anonymously by preloading their browser with small chunks of money, again anonymously. Maybe there is a way to make this mechanism both anonymous and legal (for tax purposes) , but i don't think anyone has cracked that yet. Advertising circumvents all these requirements, and creates an indirect channel that transfers value from the user to the publisher. And advertising is here to stay: businesses always have and always will will keep spending a similar % of revenues for advertising. It's not advertising that's wrong with the internet, it's tracking.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that? Bing, with all the money and power of MS behind it, has about 5% market share. Yahoo has about 2% market share. Baidu has about 15% but also total assets of 40 Billion US Dollars. > The best ideas What are those?
- buboard 7y ago
  > Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that? I think money is not the biggest hurdle. The problem with most ad networks is they copy google: most of the adsense alternatives for example are simply googles's ad partners that use google's ad exchanges. I think the ad space instead needs a "stripe for ads", a company that will quickly catch up with what publishers want, create solutions and push advertisers to use them. The alternative ideas include anonymous micropauyments.

zamfi 7y ago

> Non-ad monetization models are not hindered by lack of investment or ideas, they are hindered by REGULATION. The best ideas are impossible to do with today's regulatory and fee structures [...] Can you say more about this?

buboard 7y ago
having thousands of customers paying $0.1 per day is a huge accounting hassle. Trying to account e.g. for EU VAT is a maze of galactic proportions for a small startup. So you 'll need an intermediary who will get a cut of that income. And then you 'll occasionally be getting weird looks from banks because apparently that business model looks suspicious ( i've had my bank deny me services because we do virtual currency sales in game - through an intermediary). There is also no frictionless way to do it: payments should ideally be integrated in browsers, and people should be able to pay anonymously by preloading their browser with small chunks of money, again anonymously. Maybe there is a way to make this mechanism both anonymous and legal (for tax purposes) , but i don't think anyone has cracked that yet. Advertising circumvents all these requirements, and creates an indirect channel that transfers value from the user to the publisher. And advertising is here to stay: businesses always have and always will will keep spending a similar % of revenues for advertising. It's not advertising that's wrong with the internet, it's tracking.

diffeomorphism 7y ago

Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that? Bing, with all the money and power of MS behind it, has about 5% market share. Yahoo has about 2% market share. Baidu has about 15% but also total assets of 40 Billion US Dollars. > The best ideas What are those?

buboard 7y ago
> Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that? I think money is not the biggest hurdle. The problem with most ad networks is they copy google: most of the adsense alternatives for example are simply googles's ad partners that use google's ad exchanges. I think the ad space instead needs a "stripe for ads", a company that will quickly catch up with what publishers want, create solutions and push advertisers to use them. The alternative ideas include anonymous micropauyments.