5 ms·

almost nobody pays for 'ad free' experience

• Nextgrid 5y ago
  The problem is that the ad-free experience often costs orders of magnitude above what the ad view would earn them. Let's take newspapers for example, ad view on a single page load would maybe earn them 10c, but if I wanted to pay I'd need to subscribe to a monthly commitment of ~15£/month (for the WSJ) and still have no guarantee my data won't be used maliciously (there is no way to pay anonymously) nor whether cancelling the subscription will be easy (no idea for the WSJ but the New York Times is infamous for this).
  • shukantpal 5y ago
    The subscription doesn't have a limit on how many times you use the app, however. If you read 150 pages a month (~5 a day), then the math is equal.
    • Nextgrid 5y ago
      True, but there are hundreds of news websites out there and even if there was just one you'd still have to read it 5 times a day to make the subscription worthwhile. I don't read news near enough to make a single subscription worthwhile, and even if I did I would read multiple sources meaning I'd need multiple subscriptions - that's completely unsustainable.