3 ms·

Called it [1]. It's a cat-and-mouse game and, unfortunately, advertising is just _that_ lucrative. Privacy-minded browsing will help those that care (for now.

Called it [1]. It's a cat-and-mouse game and, unfortunately, advertising is just _that_ lucrative. Privacy-minded browsing will help those that care (for now...), but that's an unsustainable option with the current monetization channels available. If a content publisher cannot monetize you, they will think nothing of blocking you. There will be some public backlash against companies that do so and there will be some sites who will lose money because of it, but the rest of the publishers will simply follow the money while the industry shifts towards more intrusive tactics. There needs to be a monetization channel that is 1) good for both users AND publishers and 2) pays just as much as current methods. Unfortunately none of the current systems support that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9975955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9975955

drusepth 5y ago
>There needs to be a monetization channel that is 1) good for both users AND publishers and 2) pays just as much as current methods. I agree, but what party would you like that money to originate from? Ads work well right now for consumer-to-consumer (e.g. I create a blog and you view it) because there's a rich, third-party that money can flow from (a company running ads --> money to me) without having to charge you, the end-user who is more than likely significantly less well-off than a corporation. To buck that pattern, you need the money to come from somewhere else. Subscriptions and direct payments are an obvious choice (see: the boom of SaaS over the past few years) but people are already complaining that they have so many subscriptions they lose track of them all, and spend too much money on what used to be a "free" internet. So, I don't think there's a solution where the money comes from the end-user. However, any time you add in a third party for the money to flow from, they're going to want something in return. And unless you want that cash flowing from the site owner to that third party (...why would you?), they're gonna need to offer something else. I don't see any solution other than "a third party pays for something users and/or the site can create for free". Is the answer to just find something free other than analytics/usage, or are there other approaches to monetize a site while still making it "free" to access?
- misterbwong 5y ago
  Unfortunately I don't see a good solution either. Large direct to consumer business models like SaaS or subscriptions are really only sustainable at scale, and even then it's dicey. In a SaaS model, the big fish win and we lose the democratic nature of the current internet. Society has driven the perceived price of content so low that the content itself is worth less than the aggregate audience. Really, in what other space does the average consumer set their price expectations at free AND balk at paying $5/mo for unlimited access to a product? The only thing that seems to come close to moving the needle towards privacy is somehow pushing advertisers into in-market advertising (think early internet-style site banner ads) and out of programmatic/user tracked ads. There is some evidence that these programmatic ads don't really perform as well as they claim but from what I can gather, the data is still unclear.

drusepth 5y ago

>There needs to be a monetization channel that is 1) good for both users AND publishers and 2) pays just as much as current methods. I agree, but what party would you like that money to originate from? Ads work well right now for consumer-to-consumer (e.g. I create a blog and you view it) because there's a rich, third-party that money can flow from (a company running ads --> money to me) without having to charge you, the end-user who is more than likely significantly less well-off than a corporation. To buck that pattern, you need the money to come from somewhere else. Subscriptions and direct payments are an obvious choice (see: the boom of SaaS over the past few years) but people are already complaining that they have so many subscriptions they lose track of them all, and spend too much money on what used to be a "free" internet. So, I don't think there's a solution where the money comes from the end-user. However, any time you add in a third party for the money to flow from, they're going to want something in return. And unless you want that cash flowing from the site owner to that third party (...why would you?), they're gonna need to offer something else. I don't see any solution other than "a third party pays for something users and/or the site can create for free". Is the answer to just find something free other than analytics/usage, or are there other approaches to monetize a site while still making it "free" to access?

misterbwong 5y ago
Unfortunately I don't see a good solution either. Large direct to consumer business models like SaaS or subscriptions are really only sustainable at scale, and even then it's dicey. In a SaaS model, the big fish win and we lose the democratic nature of the current internet. Society has driven the perceived price of content so low that the content itself is worth less than the aggregate audience. Really, in what other space does the average consumer set their price expectations at free AND balk at paying $5/mo for unlimited access to a product? The only thing that seems to come close to moving the needle towards privacy is somehow pushing advertisers into in-market advertising (think early internet-style site banner ads) and out of programmatic/user tracked ads. There is some evidence that these programmatic ads don't really perform as well as they claim but from what I can gather, the data is still unclear.