That’s not the case with other paid products. I’d argue it would reduce click bait since the whole idea of click bait was created as a solution to drive more im

That’s not the case with other paid products. I’d argue it would reduce click bait since the whole idea of click bait was created as a solution to drive more impressions on a page regardless of the quality of the material. Impressions matter because revenue comes from ads so you don’t give a shit if someone actually reads the article, you just want them to click on it or share it based on the headline. If your main revenue source was being paid by people who wanted to read the full article then you would succeed by creating articles people wanted to read. You have to show a small preview to do this but that’s standard practice now. You could also prorate by number of pages read or number of words if you wanted to be fancy.