10 ms·
What guarantee is there that this will reduce ads in any way? If cable TV taught us anything it is that you can charge outrageous amounts of money and still fo
by corty 6y ago
What guarantee is there that this will reduce ads in any way?
If cable TV taught us anything it is that you can charge outrageous amounts of money and still force your customers to watch ads. Paper newspapers are also full of ads, even the ones the reader pays for. I can not think of any reason why the web should be different. Ads will stay, monetization will just be income on-top.
- sofixa 6y ago> What guarantee is there that this will reduce ads in any way? None, of course. It's possible to disable ads for users with Web Monetization, but it's also possible to be greedy and use both at the same time. But remember, we're not talking about big companies or anything of the sort, it's more for small scale personal blogs, or, as i pointed out, institutions like the Internet Archive or Wikipedia, so greed is IMHO unlikely and will probably be rare. In any case, if you use an ad blocker, which you absolutely should, the ads don't impact you.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago> In any case, if you use an ad blocker, which you absolutely should... Why should everyone block the lowest friction way to pay creators? Besides the security argument which speaks more to JS, IMO.
- sofixa 6y agoBecause ads are obnoxious and privacy nightmares, and also security risks. You can just disable JS and third-party cookies, but that might break some websites ( and that number will only increase due to the proliferation of SPAs and fancy frontend frameworks). IMHO setting up ads on your website is higher friction that web monetization is.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- c22 6y agoI've actually noticed a bit of a reversal in JS requiring trends over the last year or two. Of course there are still plenty of lazy product landing pages and wordpress blogs that don't work without JS and any time I see a hamburger menu I know I'll be navigating the site 'manually'. But many of the bigger news and information sites that used to deliver a blank page at least now deliver some bastardized version of their text content (though usually not their images).
- lupire 6y agoThe friction of ads is huge, and you pay it when you see them (interupton, distraction, stress, page experience, malware risk), and when you buy things there's a cut that goes to the value-destroying ad/adtech industry. Web monetization is lower friction.
- wongarsu 6y agoSmall scale personal blogs cost next to nothing (as in: reasonable web hosting packets for $2/year exist), why would they need ads? Wikipedia on the other hand makes lots of money with one of the most obtrusive ads on the internet (giant banner that slowly rolls down stating some variant of "if everyone donates just $5 we can stop annoying you right now"). But despite getting more and more donations every year they don't make the ad less annoying or run it shorter. So I have zero confidence that giving them another revenue stream will help
- wpietri 6y agoHosting doesn't cost much. Content production isn't free.
- tubularhells 6y agoIt is free for wikipedia.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoTwitter is worth and spends billions but wikipedia should run on fumes? Are people here collectively insane?
- remram 6y agoPeople here hold multiple opinions because there are multiple people here, not because the single mind they share is insane.
- wpietri 6y agoThe content production still isn't free; other people just bear the costs.
- 6y ago
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago> Wikipedia If I remember, Wikipedia is rather controversial, for having a ginormous war chest, but still having PBS-style begfests all the time. I don't think they do any ads, now, except for their begging headers.
- lupire 6y agoWikipedia asks for money once a year. They have a ginormous war chest because they do unmatched incredibly good work for the whole world and don't waste too much of the money, despite all the nitpickers.
- Macha 6y agoNo, they have a ginormous war chest because their increasingly intrusive advertising campaigns convince people that the operational costs of wikipedia.org are unsustainable otherwise, and this has so far kept ahead of their also massively inflating expenditure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago90 million a year is an inflated expenditure for the most productice website to ever exist? Its an absolute pittance, that the turnover of a midsized bakery chain! Would you care to backup this outrageous claim by demonstrating similarly popular website, awash with content, that spends less?
- Macha 6y agoThe running costs of the site are 2.5 million/year per their own financial reports: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/31/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY18-19.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/31/Wikim... Staff expenses are harder to break down, as they don't break out who's working on e.g. wikipedia development and funding and who's working on, e.g. the social movement strategy, which is allocated approximately the same budget as running wikipedia.org: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Frequently_asked_questions#Why_will_it_require_up_to_US$2.5_million_to_develop_a_movement_strategy https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/...? But from just the information they provided us, can you give a reason why Wikipedia in 2019 would need 33% more staff expenditure than 2018 for running the site? And similar increases in the years leading up to that?
- BelenusMordred 6y ago> In any case, if you use an ad blocker, which you absolutely should, the ads don't impact you. If everyone used an adblocker it would definitely impact you. So while I agree with the vibe and block for convenience along with security, it's an uneasy feeling knowing that such benefits for me only exist because many others aren't taking advantage of content creators like this.
- II2II 6y ago> If everyone used an adblocker it would definitely impact you. Sure, but would the impact be positive or negative? While some people rightfully ask to be compensated for high quality content, money also encourages many more people to contribute to the glut of low value, derivative, and outright plagiarized content.
- sn_master 6y agoyup, anytime you lookup for something on youtube, the top results are full of lame, short and sponsorship-packed animated Wikipedia summaries often with mismatching theme music because they don't want to read a book, license footage or even proper music. web is the same. tons of lazy blogs copy pasting without any effort in understanding or explaining from a different angle.
- BelenusMordred 6y ago> would the impact be positive or negative? That's a fair question and not sure I have the answer to it other than stating a personal preference. Much smarter people than me have been trying to solve this content conundrum for decades now and it doesn't seem like anyone has found something workable for all parties involved. It's a bitter pill to swallow that maybe what exists now is the best system we have and it will be around for a long time going forward.
- ineedasername 6y agoIn any case, if you use an ad blocker, which you absolutely should, the ads don't impact you That is already the status quo. The entire premise of this article is that web monetization will reduce the actual ads. It changes nothing if I still have to use my ad blocker. I don't think and but avery small minority of content creators will actually reduce their ads, and these might in any case be the people who are already very conscious of and respectfully of their consumers' privacy.
- 0-_-0 6y ago>What guarantee is there that this will reduce ads in any way? Websites that don't disable ads for subscribers will get fewer subscribers.
- amelius 6y agoBut every now and then some smartass in a boardroom will come up with the idea to test that theory.
- IncRnd 6y ago> Websites that don't disable ads for subscribers will get fewer subscribers. How does that differ from today?
- Aeronwen 6y agoSince you're backed by ad money, you can undercut the subscription price of your competitors. Maybe it makes up the difference, maybe it works better and you force the competition to switch to ads or go out of business. Maybe it fails, but it's certainly not guaranteed.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoCable wasn't in a competitive market. It at least seems like websites are. Newspapers are dying and clinging on to a model that worked when being one had a high barrier to entry. Would you honestly think of taking out ads in a newspaper these days? Apart from for very specific things, I wouldn't.
- bcardarella 6y agoIndividual cable stations are in a competitive market.
- phreeza 6y agoThe incentive for websites is to build a moat against competition, and many succeed.
- josefx 6y agoYou can probably try most paid services without long term consequences and quit if they aren't worth your money?
- benttoothpaste 6y agoIf you are willing to pay then you are also a lot more valuable as a target for ads. There is no chance of ad reduction. Unfortunately, “post purchase monetization” is a new buzzword.
- ahelwer 6y agoExactly. There was a netflix series a few years back called Maniac where characters could choose to listen to in-person sales pitches if they're unable to afford bus fare, for example. Such a scheme would not work because if you're too poor to avoid bus fare then you're too poor to be likely to purchase an advertised product. Analogously & conversely, if you're willing to loosen your purse strings for paid content then you're also likely to have disposable income to pay for advertised products. This is why Facebook will never offer a paid ad-free service; it would remove all the actually valuable advertising targets from their pool of users.
- mobjack 6y agoIn practice, paid websites have much less obtrusive ads. There are less incentives to ruin the experience for those who are directly giving them money.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI am going to use Hulu as an example. They have both and the moment they attempt to introduce ads into their streams in my paid option, I will drop them like a hot cake. I am have no problem paying for service. I do not want ads and I make that clear. Ideally, they wouldn't try to sell my profile either, but baby steps. Post-purchase is technically still there, but less obtrusive to me.
- wpietri 6y agoA few factors come to mind: Web ad-blocking technology is much better than cable ad-blocking technology. Cable is mostly oligopolies, which are big on extractive behavior and revenue maximization. A lot of the good stuff on the web is individuals and small groups of people who want to make stuff sustainably but aren't focused on maximum revenue. People will stop paying the extra money if their experience doesn't get better. I also note that a non-open version of this that I use, scroll.com, negotiates deals with publishers. So setting some standards is a pretty obvious fix if publishers go against the spirit of things in a way that threatens the effort.
- rubyfan 6y agoStreaming is currently teaching us the same lesson. We now have all these different islands of content by major content owners and producers where we’re paying $5 here and $10 there for content that includes ads. Hulu, Peacock, Discovery+, Paramount+, Sling, even some content on Prime. I think it’s great most of these have an ad-free tier but for how long?
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoThe content is not even consistent - Attack on Titan was on uk netflix for months, but when I decided to watch it I discovered it's gone!
- lrem 6y agoHave you tried not being a foreigner? This is so annoying. Our office IP blocks are classified as US. So you could see folk sitting in the office in the evening, to watch Netflix content they could not see at home.
- tokamak-teapot 6y agoIn the UK we have many options for TV. The major options (as far as I can tell are): * FreeView. This is digital TV that comes through your aerial. As the name implies, you don't pay a subscription for a base set of channels - which is quite a large number. Most of these channels have advertising. Some, like the BBC channels, only advertise their own programming, apps, etc. * Netflix. Pay, and don't get adverts. * Sky TV. This requires a subscription fee, and provides the FreeView set of channels plus more. There are still adverts, though, so you get to pay and also watch adverts. This is somehow a popular option!
- Leherenn 6y agoIt's a popular option because it is the only way to watch some content, especially sport. It's not that people like them, it's just that between paying to watch football with ads and not watching football, they prefer the former.
- jonahbenton 6y agoNone in this approach. The approach that reduces ads is to have the user bid for and win the ad slots. There are important details about running this auction fairly and cost effectively for users (Vickrey mechanics etc) but the only way to enforce user intent to control their own attention and reduce ad noise is to have the user pay towards that purpose.
- arp242 6y agoWell, for starters people will at least have the option to earn an income without ads. Right now this can be pretty tricky, depending on the type of site you run. I've been working on a recipe website for a while; it's a slow burner project. I have a bunch of feature/UX ideas that I think will improve things a lot, and I also want a site that's not full of nonsense like ads and "oh, you scrolled to see the actual recipe description HAHA FUCK YOU, here's a newsletter popup first instead" and "allow us to send you our fucking notifications" popups and whatnot. It's always hard to be sure, but overall I think it would be pretty viable business. But ... how do you monetize this without ads? Ask for donations? Things like Patreon have made this more common in the last few years and it could work, but it sure is starting a business on hard mode. The easier all of this becomes, the better there's a chance that a viable sustainable alternative will even exist in the first place. A big reason why this is a slow burner project is because I just don't rate the chances of actually earning significant amount of money with this in 2-3 years as very high unless I resort to adding ads (and my bar for "signifiant" is really low by the way, maybe €1000/month of turnover). Even though this is very much a project that I built purely because it's the kind if site I want to use myself, it's just really hard to justify spending a lot of time on this right now in the current "internet economy". So in short: no, it won't guarantee anything, but it does open up new possibilities.
- lupire 6y agoHow much time are you investing for €1000/mo goal? That seems high for a slow burn recipe site which is a commodity.
- arp242 6y agoI worked on it for about 2 months full-time two years ago, but this was after a burn-out where I really needed to rediscover my joy in programming, which I did through this project so I got a lot of value out of it already in a way :-) Since then I've worked on it on the odd Sunday every once in a while, not all that much really. While it's an interesting prototype right now, actually finishing it will be quite a lot more work as there are some technical challenges remaining in the way I want to do things. Half a year at least, but let's round that up to 10 months because I'm probably underestimating things. If we consider a monthly salary of €3,000 (pretty low for a senior dev) then I'll spend €36k on building the thing, a further €36k building up revenue, so it'll me 6 years to recoup this investment with €1,000/month. In short, I don't think €1,000/month is very high at all. And this doesn't account for any marketing or other costs. Actually building a platform is one thing, but getting useful content (in this case, recipes) is another. Simply copying existing content would be pointless, so this requires further investment. Of course, the "start-up way" to do this is to find some investor who will give you money, but that investor will expect a return on their investment (which is reasonable enough) and it means I will need to maximize profit and it'll be like all the other sites that I mentioned before. What I really want is a site built by someone who likes cooking for other people who like cooking. I think the world would be better if it's easier to build something like this while still earning a reasonable amount of money (and €1,000 is very much on the low end of that IMO). As for "being a commodity", sure. But in my opinion a lot of them aren't very good for various reasons, and I think it can be a lot better.
- sn_master 6y agoYouTube premium too. At first it was a true guarantee of no ads and now most channels have "sponsored" VPN/RaidShadowLegends/RayCon/Ridge baked in the video. tho in fairness, some channels like gun and ww2 ones don't have another choice because youtube demonetized them and not everyone likes to use patreon or the alt tubes.
- sofixa 6y agoBut that's not (directly) Youtube's fault, is it?
- sn_master 6y agoIt isn't (except for the demonetized channels maybe), but it shows that most content creators will not reject extra income opportunities even if it dilutes the experience of their paying users. I don't blame them either of course. I wish they atleast put it in the beginning or the end instead of smack dab in the middle of the actual content.
- mitchdoogle 6y agoIs this kind of thing circumventing YouTube terms and conditions?
- loufe 6y agoHappily their sponsors can't read the data on who watched their ad segment. While my TV's youtube app can't be helped, on the desktop I use sponsorblock which is a surprisingly effective solution. I strongly recommend it.
- sn_master 6y agoBut nothing prevents the channel owner from sharing the audience data with the sponsors, no?
- chiefalchemist 6y agoNot only do you watch ads on cable, but they watch you watching ads (and shows) and then resell that information to better target more ads and so on. We are paying data harvesters for the privilage of supplying them with the raw materials to make even more money.
- sammorrowdrums 6y agoWell a lot of websites do in fact, via either coil (or Scroll which is similar concept but does not use the WM API).
- viraptor 6y agoSadly the number of people visiting with them enabled is very minimal. I used flattr for a few years and remember maybe 4 sites explicitly supporting it - it may be higher now with GH and YT integrations. Now I've got flattr and coil on my (completely tech) content and have not had any hits in 1M views or so. I really wish the numbers on both sides increase over time.
- gweinberg 6y agoCable TV didn't teach us anything. The premium channels are ad-free, the ad-ridden channels aren't getting money from the cable company. I have Hulu ad-free, it costs me 4 extra bucks a month.
- jimkleiber 6y agoI agree with you. The challenge is that when companies are so focused on growing, they run out of ways to grow. For example, if they saturate their market, since they can't find new customers, the only way to grow is to get more money from each customer. So they seem to increase prices to those existing customers, create new products for those existing customers, or create new products for other customers (often advertisers).
- LorenPechtel 6y agoYup. Did an on-line check-in for a doctor's appointment yesterday. They added a new twist--an ad at the end.
- nine_k 6y agoI may gladly pay exactly for absence of ads, explicitly stated. This works for majority of mobile apps. This works on YouTube. People are conditioned to expect such an option. This may be not the cheapest option, though. Consider mass media. They usually have the "three free articles" tier and "all articles + ads" paid tier. I won't mind a "N articles without ads" paid tier, even though just running an ad blocker is easier.