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Stances like this probably feel good to write out, but they miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. Tha

Stances like this probably feel good to write out, but they miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. People won’t pay $5 a day to subscribe to a newspaper, but the ads subsidize enough of it to make it so that a paid subscription is accessible to more people. On the internet, the fact is this: Most companies do not offer a reduced ad load in exchange for your subscription money. In fact, they will be happy to take money from every source they can. The fact that The Verge is doing so reflects that they understand their audience and are trying to meet them halfway. It also reduces the cost of the subscription for you, the end user. This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it.

0x0203 2y ago
I've said it before, but I feel like I need to keep saying it: If the people actually using/consuming a product aren't willing to pay the cost required to make/produce said product, then that's probably a good indicator that the product doesn't have enough value to justify its existence. If the Verge can't convince enough people to pay for their output, I'd argue it's not worth keeping around. Advertising ruins the producer/consumer relationship and incentivizes behaviors that disadvantage the consumer and push the producer away from their original purpose. If the Verge wants to diversify income, then they should provide a product that has value to a wider audience. That doesn't mean that every single person consuming/using the product needs to pay either. Patreon and similar services have proven that if what you make is of high enough quality and provides enough value, it's possible to convince a large enough subset of the consumers to pay enough to cover the costs of production. Especially with online services where the cost difference between producing for 1 person vs 1000 is nearly negligible. The few can, and often do, subsidize the many. And if that changes over time, then the product ceases to be valuable enough to be worth producing and should simply stop being made. And I'd say this is even true of news and things that people might argue are for the public good. In my opinion, most "news" today isn't actual informative news and doesn't really serve the public. But of the vanishing little left that does, if it informs and educates the citizenry in a way that improves the lives and stability of the country as a whole, and if its natural cost is more than can be reasonably covered by willing consumers, then there's a reasonable argument for covering the cost with taxes. Put sufficient legal barriers between the government funding and the content being produced to prevent government manipulation/propaganda and make sure the press can operate unimpeded. My best idea for such a government funded news source is to write into law that said news source's budget is dependent solely upon country population and country GDP, all staffing decisions are made internally, and leaders are decided by citizen vote, but I'm sure there are other ways people can come up with for maintaining a free but government/tax funded press agency. But ad-funded (of which I think even public radio/tv has effectively become), creates perverse incentives that drive the mission away from actually informing and educating. People can still pay for tech reviews, or travel advice, talking head current events opinion shows, or whatever news is in its current form if they want. Privately owned/operated press can still exist if it's useful enough for people to find it valuable and worth the cost. But advertising just ruins everything eventually.
- heresie-dabord 2y ago
  > If the people actually using/consuming a product aren't willing to pay the cost required to make/produce said product, then that's probably a good indicator that the product doesn't have enough value to justify its existence. This is not true. In many cases, we can see that people value a service by their returning usage, but... they often want other people to pay for it.
- kasey_junk 2y ago
  “Eventually” is doing a ton of heavy lifting in your argument. Ads have been a primary revenue driver for news media going back hundreds of years, including to when the US was codifying the civic value of news into its governing principles. The idea that revenue choice is binary or that if you have to use ads you shouldn’t be in business is a very modern one, and one that’s outside of historical norms.
  - 0x0203 2y ago
    The idea that it's wrong to use slavery as a cheap labor force is also modern and outside historical norms. Just because it's historically prevalent doesn't make something right or even good/acceptable. Some things based on historical norms are good. Some clearly aren't. And it seems to me a bit disingenuous to ignore the technological changes and the speed, pervasiveness, and invasiveness with which advertising is now done compared to the historical context being appealed to. Even if one grants that advertising wasn't "as bad" back then, that doesn't make what we have now acceptable.
    - kasey_junk 2y ago
      I’m more commenting on the idea that ads ruin things over time. If that’s the case then it’s a hundreds of year timescale (or news media was ruined long ago).
- ghaff 2y ago
  There are a ton of things that many people would like but aren't willing to pay for. Would I like a personal chef and a personal driver at my beck and call? Sure. But I'm not willing to pay what that would cost for routine use. I do pay for some scheduled and infrequent personal care services. Also, government-funded comes with its own strings which may become more obvious than you like in the coming years.
eqvinox 2y ago
I think you're missing the point. There's a reasonable number of people who are willing to pay for content like this, but only if they actually get an ad-free experience in exchange. The business decision The Verge needs to make is whether they want to try to reach these people or not, since these people won't pay for a model that still has ads. (There could of course be 2 subscription levels at different prices, one that still has some ads… but that's also extra work and a different consumer experience.) I don't think newspaper ads are a good analogy either since the consumption model of a dead-tree newspaper isn't such that you get the ads thrown into your face when trying to read an article. And classifieds specifically I wouldn't even call ads, more of a community note board service.
- cons0le 2y ago
  Heck, if online ads didn't move around and pop up in front of the screen, less people would block them. But the reality is that companies are too greedy, and will never draw the line and say "this is enough" . I can't afford to subscribe to the dozens of sites I glance at everyday for 2 minutes. Quite frankly as someone that grew up with the "old" internet, I don't like the idea of paying for every single site I use. It feels like making every road a toll road.
  - madeofpalk 2y ago
    > But the reality is that companies are too greedy I don't think this is true. Ads get worse and more hostile because it so easily turns into a race to the bottom. Worse ads devalue the page and lower the CPM, which leads to websites to add more ads, which lowers everything again.
- shortformblog 2y ago
  I am not missing the point. Rather, the point is so small as to not be financially worth it for them. I am saying that The Verge made a business decision to balance ad load and subscriber cost to potentially bring in more subscribers. They probably did the math and realized that charging people $15 a month would not bring in many subscribers, and that they could have charged $5 a month with regular ad load, but they found this $7 sweet spot where they could give people the best of both worlds. And the $50 model means people are more committed long-term making it more valuable for them. I would guess that “reduced ad load” means that they would only put premium advertisers, like the stuff you would see in glossy magazines, in front of those readers. I trust given how careful they were with rolling this out that they did the math and tried to strike a balance to please the most people.
passwordoops 2y ago
True. And from what I understood, the Verge is offering two tiers - less ads and no ads. You can pay for the one you think is worthwhile. As a consumer I definitely lean on the "if I'm paying a subscription, I expect zero ads" side of the fence. It just has to be worth the additional price for me (The Verge is not)
- eqvinox 2y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/subscribe https://www.theverge.com/subscribe only has a monthly and annual option, and it doesn't look like either of them is "no ads"? The annual one is just cheaper and has some magazine?
- GraemeMeyer 2y ago
  There is no “no ad” tier. It’s full ads and reduced ads only
- raverbashing 2y ago
  Yeah, the economics of it make sense. The optics of it is awful though.
- yunwal 2y ago
  The no ad tier being use an adblocker?
Loic 2y ago
> Most companies do not offer a reduced ad load in exchange for your subscription money. At least in Germany, this has changed quite a lot. The publishers are naming the offers "Pur Abo" or similar. This is not perfect as one analysis[0] is showing, but for me, on the good way. [0]: https://netzpolitik.org/2020/nicht-ganz-ohne/ https://netzpolitik.org/2020/nicht-ganz-ohne/ (in German) Edit: Added German analysis of these offers.
- shortformblog 2y ago
  Intriguing. I know the German media market is very different from the American one—back in my D.C. days, when I was still at the WaPo Express, I met a German journalist who was working in the U.S. and I remember her explaining to me how different the rules were for promotion and social media and such. I do think The Verge offering this could lead other U.S. publishers to follow suit, especially if it’s successful.
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    Just wanted to say I used to love reading the Express on the Metro in the morning.
manuelmoreale 2y ago
I’ll guarantee you that it doesn’t make me feel any better to write this type of posts. I’m just exhausted by the modern web. As for the other point you’re making, that’s complete nonsense. You don’t differentiate your revenue streams by serving a sub par product to your paying customers. Serve those stupid ads to free users, treat your paying customers with respect.
- shortformblog 2y ago
  Gonna be straight up with you: I feel like you would have never thought about this had they not mentioned it, because so few media outlets are even thinking about reducing ad load for paid subscribers. As someone in media, I’m tired of well-intentioned media outlets try to strike a reasonable balance only to get yelled at for it like they aren’t already walking a tightrope. They have staffs of people to pay for, payroll. Travel budgets. Offices. Legal bills. And that they get hell for trying to give an inch, in my opinion, sucks. If you want them to offer an ad-free tier, tell them that directly! Given that they are clearly thinking about it suggests they might listen to you. But your binary way of approaching this is not helping and ultimately discourages companies who want to wean themselves off of adtech. Ripping off the band-aid is a lot harder than you’re making it out to be.
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    > If you want them to offer an ad-free tier, tell them that directly! Given that they are clearly thinking about it suggests they might listen to you. The first thing I did the other day was emailing Nilay Patel, editor in chief at The Verge, to share my thoughts on the subject. That’s before I posted on my site. As for “ripping off the band aid”, again, that’s nonsense. I’m not saying they should drop ads. They should figure out how much a user is worth and then price their membership accordingly. The vast, vast majority won’t switch anyway because that’s the reality of today’s web. As for your first point, I’d not have noticed that because I run multiple adblockers everywhere and I am THRILLED that I can now support in other ways.
  - romanows 2y ago
    I've asked NYT, WaPo, and the non-profit Chicago Sun Times for an ad-free tier (no ads displayed in their apps) and they've all said "we don't offer an ad-free tier".
bambax 2y ago
Okay, and probably true, but the difference with newspaper is, it would be prohibitively expensive to produce different versions of the same newspaper for different subscription options, while it's trivial to do on the web. Why not offer an ad-free tier?
- xixixao 2y ago
  The richest people, hence the most valuable for advertisers, would buy it. This significantly affects the whole ad business value. Such that the ad-free tier would have to be priced too high. It’s more profitable to “force” everyone to watch ads. I’m afraid.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Yep. Elephant in the room of media economics. Look at ads on daytime broadcast TV and it is: medicare advantage, something you can get from medicare, a medicare scam, personal injury lawyer, some drug your insurance might pay for, personal injury lawyer #2. Ads for something you spend your own money on are few and far between (maybe you will get a car ad because if nobody bought a car who'd get hit by a car and call William Matar?) People in that demographic don't have money to spend so they get subprime ads. In the day newspapers and magazines thought about the balance of ad and subscription revenue a lot. On top of (1) people have money for a subscription being better qualified than people who don't, (2) people who are motivated to get a subscription are qualified because they care about the topic (you can get a free magazine about construction equipment but you'd better convince them you are really in the industry) and (3) in the current era, subscribers give up their name and other personal details and will be more definitely tracked.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      You see the same effect with twitter's advertiser exodus since it was acquired. It was not long ago you'd see everything on twitter: prominent fashion brands, car companies, big name electronics, everything you'd expect from a healthy ad ecosystem. Now it's basically nothing but crypto scams, reverse mortgages, supplements, dude wipes and pills that make your dick work. Like you can feel whatever you feel about that, but it's a clear, marked shift.
eterevsky 2y ago
It is always possible to have several tiers of subscriptions, a cheap tier with some additional feature and ads, and a higher tier with no ads at all. I am perfectly willing to pay extra to support a website or service that I'm using, but only if it removes all ads.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  The problem is: advertisers will argue that if you're offering a tier of service that removes ads, that's specifically going to be the most appealing to the group of your user-base that has the most money to spend and whom is most ready to spend it, evidenced by the fact that they have subscribed to your ad-free tier, and is therefore worth the most in terms of reaching with ads. Those people are self-selecting as the most responsive to being appealed to to buy things, which is what your advertisers want. This is why the "subscribe to remove ads" thing never took off in a big way. Users love it, but advertisers hate it and it craters the value of the ad space you sell to whomever doesn't think it's worth it/can't afford it.
  - greenie_beans 2y ago
    yikes. that makes sense for an advertiser but also fuck that.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    > This is why the "subscribe to remove ads" thing never took off in a big way [...] advertisers hate it My heart bleeds for the poor advertisers. /s Actually, no it doesn't. Not even a little bit.
    - adamc 2y ago
      Not even a smidgen. If your business plan is built around advertising, I hope your business goes broke. On this, no compromises.
  - benj111 2y ago
    Surely in this reverse Catch-22 hypothetical anyone who is willing to pay to escape ads is therefore worth more, so they would need to be served fewer ads for the same income. So the subscription should be free. And with less ads.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. My assumption is that the salaries of reporters, editors was paid for by ads. The nominal fee for the paper was to pay for the pulp, ink. I mean if you just printed up millions of papers and gave them away, people would pick them up simply as raw material for lining their bird cages, for papier-mâché, to insulate their cardboard box home on the corner of 12th and Main.....
- shortformblog 2y ago
  I worked at a number of free tabloid newspapers in my day (one small-town exurban, one mid-sized car-centric metro area, one metro area where most people took public transit) and I will say that most people did not do this. Usually they just left the papers on the train or at the coffee shop. Nonetheless, the first half of your point—the ads usually paid for all the reporting—is correct.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Right. It is/was just a big bucket of money and obviously there were free papers given away on college campuses and subway stations. But, at least back in the day, newspaper subscriptions and newsstand/put your quarter in boxes basically paid for creating and delivering the physical copies. The generally dire journalism situation these days is there is mostly no physical distribution and physical advertising dollars have become digital dimes. And local news--which was never a really thriving business--is basically dead.
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  Quite a lot of papers were, and still are, given out for free. My city still supports 3 separate print newspapers that are free in coffee shops, libraries, corner boxes, etc. They’re a great way to keep up with the actions and gripes of the local community. Being such small operations, there is very light editing and the reporter’s point of view often comes through pretty clearly. All paid for via ads from local businesses. Quite a lot of the ads are from real estate agents, which I think reflects the belief that a lot of tourists are picking up the papers in addition to residents.
nubinetwork 2y ago
Freemium gets abused, just look at YouTube... give them money and they still run ads...
- wat10000 2y ago
  No they don’t.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    Apparently they were showing some users football ads and support said that's expected. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42131778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42131778
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Youtube =/= Youtube Music. I can't speak to the latter ( I miss Google Play Music), but I have yet to receive a normal ad on Youtube premium.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
> That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. Which leads to the conclusion that the company that most disrupted the newspaper industry was not Google or Facebook but Craigslist.
belorn 2y ago
It is fairly common in a large number of industries that a large part of the valuable portion of the products get subsidized by underhanded "immoral" side of the same industry. A (in)famous example is the practice of paying for expensive ink with excessive anti-customer practices in order to keep the prices of printers low. The printing manufacturers get multiple revenue streams that are more stable over time, and printers become accessible to more people. What is there to not like about it? The biggest problem is that anti-consumer behavior causes harm. With advertisement it brings disinformation, spying, abuse of the most vulnerable in society, general distrust, are often a crime (scams, fraud, targets children, and usually ignore local advertisement laws), and siphons money to a third party which usually is outside of the country and do not pay taxes. The benefits of anti-consumer behavior are generally not worth the downsides.
Havoc 2y ago
Loads of companies out there rely on a single revenue stream. If you sell a single product you get a single revenue stream. Having a company double dip and concluding that's somehow laudable is absurd. >People won’t pay $5 a day to subscribe to a newspaper Because the product isn't delivering $5 worth of perceived value per day. Trying to extract $5 anyway via stuff like this is the wrong answer.
madeofpalk 2y ago
"Less ads" is the easy way to describe what they're offering, but I believe what they're doing is not just 50% less ad spots, but rather paying will remove all third party ad networks from the site, leaving first party ads only. > we’ll get rid of all the chumboxes and third-party programmatic ads, cut down the overall number of ad units, and only fill what’s left with high-quality ads directly sold by Vox Media If you think all advertising is immoral, then this probably doesn't do anything for you. However, if you have privacy and performance concerns, this is a big win I think. Generally I like what the verge does, and I would gladly pay if it included their podcast being ad free. The Verge’s podcast is the only podcast I listen to that I don’t pay for, and it’s full of repeating programmatic ads for crypto companies, sports betting, and cars.
- shortformblog 2y ago
  This is a good way to put it. Honestly, it sounds like they have a messaging challenge that they need to solve around this.
- chrisrhoden 2y ago
  In various contexts, you would draw the distinction here between `ads` (that is, marketing sold against large swaths of content) and `sponsorships` (marketing sold against a small targeted set of content) but the distinction is subtle and the terms are pretty overloaded.
- nyclounge 2y ago
  That is what brave is doing. If we are going down this getting money for ads road, then let's just pick the lesser of all evils.
plagiarist 2y ago
Something laudable? They're trying to sell subscriptions that people will buy. It's completely normal to criticize their offering. I agree with the criticism and you don't, that's all fine, too.
ChrisRR 2y ago
Exactly. This has been the case for decades. Newspapers have had advertising despite no being free, but if they didn't they would be so much more expensive
kshahkshah 2y ago
Don’t care. One or the other not those figure way a way to make it work. I’m furious when I pay for add free and I still am subject to ads.
ksec 2y ago
This feels such a breath of fresh air, especially being the top comment and coming from a 2009 account. >This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it. Ads is evil has been a thing on HN for a very very long time.
- shortformblog 2y ago
  It’s because I’m a nerd with a background in journalism, and have been around the realities of a lot of this stuff for a while.
  - ksec 2y ago
    Well at least HN is at the point where you could write it out and not get any personal attack. So things are improving. In 2016 - 2020 it wouldn't even be upvoted in the first place. I also dont think you need to be in journalism to understand the business case around it. People just need to understand business, or i.e the realities. But despite the swing back to somewhat moderate discussions, HN's pro business stance have been on the decline from the start and shows no kind of recovering. So please continue to chime in when you can. It certainly help to balance the dynamics of discussion.
- wat10000 2y ago
  Ads is evil has been a human thing for many times longer. Everybody hates them. At best, some accept ads as a necessary evil. It’s a dire combination: tremendously irritating and adding absolutely zero value to the world.
ghaff 2y ago
As I recall, newspaper subscriptions basically paid for the distribution cost of physical copies. Someone like the New York Times still has ads for digital subscribers but they're not crazy pop-ups all over the place. I'd probably prefer they weren't there but they don't really detract from my reading experience. I get that some people vehemently hate ads and most marketing.
gizmo 2y ago
One way to describe reality is to argue that media organizations like Vox can't survive if they don't show ads to their paid subscribers. Another way to describe reality is that people can choose to subscribe to various substacks or newsletters instead. On those platforms subscribers get zero ads, they get more in depth and more thoughtful articles, and because the system has much less overhead modest subscription revenue is sufficient. Vox also does video reviews, but then again, there are also many high quality tech youtubers. Vox certainly has the right to charge for a subscription and then serve the subscribers ads. And people have a right to walk away from a bad deal. Vox could disappear tomorrow at no great loss to society. We might like some of the reporting Vox does, but we don't need it. Vox media has raised about 450m (according to the first google result). Modest profitability is not enough for Vox Media because they need to secure a significant exit for their investors. This puts them at odds with their readers and subscribers. Not that laudable if you ask me. They made a bet they were going to disrupt traditional media and become a new great media platform. But now it looks like Vox itself is getting disrupted. Like newspapers of old clinging to a business model that no longer exists.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
  Well put. Though I couldn't care less about 'Fox noise', I'm doing that subscription of individuals, sometimes, though reluctantly because the methods of payment suck from my POV.
nltatsy 2y ago
The difference is that newspapers had tasteful ads. I didn't mind seeing a Rolex or an expensive perfume, exquisitely photographed, in the Financial Times. Most of the Internet ads are medical issues, financial scams, weight loss scams etc. Most of these are accompanied by disgusting pictures. These ads combine the worst of classic Email spam and the yellow press. Give me better ads and I might switch off the adblocker. I'd even tolerate a banner Coca Cola ad if done tastefully and if it is the only ad on the page.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > I might switch off the adblocker There's a high likelihood that your adblocker won't be able to block those anyway. But no, you probably won't switch it off. That's because you can only know the ad quality after you've been exposed to them, and after your computer has run their code, and after you've faced the risk of them maintaining the universal, persistent eavesdrop on your life.
Tade0 2y ago
> It also reduces the cost of the subscription for you, the end user. But I don't want to pay less. I want my data to not be sold to the highest bidder, that's all. As it stands there's no option for people like me other than not subscribing. This is very much like the situation with smartphones these days: they cost less because you get a bunch of bloatware that you can't uninstall. I don't want that on my device, so I went with an offering deemed "overpriced" because it has less of such crap than others and thus costs about $250 more. Ideally it should be zero, but that's the best I could get.
- conductr 2y ago
  The fact is people like you are in the minority and there’s no reason for a company to ever even entertain modifications to their product/service to cater to your wants This might seem common on HN but IRL people don’t give much attention to ad related privacy and are probably much more concerned with the fact they have to fork over a CC and a few bucks
- grahamj 2y ago
  > I want my data to not be sold to the highest bidder, that's all. sigh I wish this was easier to achieve. But at least in the case of The Verge the sub removes third party ads so it should increase privacy even if it doesn't remove all the ads.
dghughes 2y ago
> That’s why newspapers had classified ads, I don't recall in the past a company needing my identity required or be tracked just because I bought a newspaper. I pay the $1 for the newspaper and no more interaction or relationship after that. Ads are OK but why do all the ad companies need to track me and know my movements and just to show me an ad? It's basically malware, stalking. Ads are zero advantage to me the consumer for what I lose in privacy.
- fragmede 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - WickyNilliams 2y ago
    > What am I losing..? An ever increasing amount of privacy. The ad industry will never be satisfied with the amount of data they collect now. They will always want more. This insatiable appetite for tracking and data represents a slow erosion of our privacy. Building unimaginable surveillance machinery for what? So that I might buy something online once every few years? It's casting an extremely large net to catch extremely small fries. The means do not justify the ends. I think relevant, contextual ads are the best alternative. I'm more likely to eg buy something related to what I'm reading than I am to buy a mattress advertised to me across a million websites (a mattress that I've probably already bought I should add!). That doesn't require intense tracking and surveillance across the web. It just requires understanding the context in which the ads are placed. And it's essentially how marketing worked prior to digital advertising
    - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
      > If I'm trying to sell men's shampoo I wouldn't want to waste money putting ads for it in a women's magazine. Maybe women want to groom their men really good? Including hairs?
bogwog 2y ago
> miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. Why would I, as a consumer, compromise on what I want to make some MBA's life easier? That almost sounds like corporate welfare. Businesses sign up to take risks the moment they're created. A news organization doesn't need to be in business. There is nothing unjust or morally wrong with letting a business shutdown because they couldn't figure out a sustainable way to be profitable (assuming for sake of argument that most people don't subscribe due to the ads, which idk if that would really happen). > This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it. The OP is a customer of the Verge who is rejecting their offer for a new subscription service they don't like. That's called "voting with your wallet", and its the free market working as intended.
- knorker 2y ago
  Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media (mainstream and not). Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? So that it's feasible to keep producing what you actually want. I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an article whose headline sounds interesting, or someone recommended. Subscribe, even with a free trial? Pass. The free market is great. But we should not deny it when it leads to bad outcomes. If we do, then we're no better than those who say "real communism has never been tried".
  - bogwog 2y ago
    The fake news situation, like all (well, most at least) failures of the free market are solvable with regulations. I don't think any rational person would disagree that it should be illegal to deliberately spread misinformation and lies. We banned selling cigarettes to minors, we banned drugs, we (theoretically) banned monopolies, and we should be able to ban fake news. But it is currently a political weapon being wielded by a political party. I don't expect that problem will be solved any time soon, but it's not fair to blame that on capitalism. Politicians ruin everything no matter what economic system they're in. > Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? So that it's feasible to keep producing what you actually want. But I don't want ad supported journalism!
dfxm12 2y ago
you don’t get to double dip and also sell my data to your advertisers and earn more on the side. Print ads don't get your personal data and sell them to who knows who. Internet ads have become synonymous with this practice. Comparing them to print ads without this consideration is disingenuous.
alexvitkov 2y ago
This really doesn't add up to me. I don't have the numbers, but I would assume that: 1. A very small percentage of website visitors will end up paying for a subscription. 2. They make way less than $5 per user per month from ads. The money they'd lose by providing an ad-free experience to paying customers should be a rounding error. Removing ads will also increase conversion, but who knows whether or not that will be enough to offset the revenue lost. I don't particularly care about their "business reality" - if you're an online news outlet you're not paying the costs of printing and distribution - your expenses are just journalist salaries and the marginal costs of keeping a website running. If you need to charge anything close to $5 per user per day to keep such an operation running, you should be out of business.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  2) is because of 1). They make way less than $5/user/month, but here's thousands of users to close that gap. So the paid users are a smaller slice than you'd guess at first blush. >if you need to charge anything close to $5 per user per day to keep such an operation running, you should be out of business. That's just American labor in a nutshell. if a jounralist is making full time national minimum wage ($7.25, 40 hours a week), that's very roughly $1000/month post tax. that very pooly paid jounalist needs 200 subcribers to sustain them. \ costs are going up, but readership and revenue is not. This doesn't end well for anyone. And yes, many businesses are dying right now. >I don't particularly care about their "business reality" if you don't care about them, I'm not sure why they'd care about your opinions on how they run.
adamtaylor_13 2y ago
Reality and principles don't always align. There's a "rubber meets road" moment where you have to decide what your principles are worth. I do not believe there was any rationale behind this pricing decision. I believe it is pure greed, and you're not likely to change my mind. I clutch my principles rather tightly, especially in cases like this. I will never pay for a streaming service whose first payment tier is "less ads", nor will I ever pay for a _newspaper_ of all things whose first premium tier is "less ads". I don't think double-dipping is laudable, and I don't think we should encourage it. Their (in)ability to fund their business isn't my problem, frankly.
freetinker 2y ago
From a UX perspective, there’s really no way to measure “fewer ads”. Customers with subscriptions aren’t doing A/B tests and feeling satisfied that they’re seeing fewer ads. They’re seeing ads. Still a subpar experience. The “fewer ads” narrative exists on some MBA/bean counter’s spreadsheet. This should be an absolute benefit, not a relative benefit. Who’s to say the number of ads won’t ratchet up in the future? Almost surely will. Let’s say a subscription customer sees 50 ads today vs 100 a non-subscription customer sees. Tomorrow, they 2x that – sub customer sees 100 ads, non-sub customer sees 200. Does a sub customer derive smug satisfaction that they’re seeing fewer ads than a non-sub customer? How would one even know? They’re just seeing ads. The correct amount of ads for a subscription service (from a UX perspective) is zero.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  1. The Verge's post says they are paywalling some of their content, so the offering seems more than just reduced ads. 2. People do notice when $7/mo is cheaper than $16/mo which is possible because there are still ads.
wat10000 2y ago
There are plenty of subscription services out there that are ad-free. YouTube does it, I think all the various music streaming services do it, most if not all of the video streaming services have an ad-free tier. Beyond the media realm, my cell phone service doesn’t package ads with my monthly subscription, nor my home internet service. I could go on. What narrow idea of “a media business” must have ads even when you pay, and why do they have to be different from everything else?
- adamc 2y ago
  Youtube does not do it. You stop seeing youtube's ads, which are obnoxious, but you still see the actual content author's ads.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    YouTube shows you what you ask it to show you. The vast majority of content has no ads. You can easily go forever without seeing one. That’s like saying Verizon has ads because I see ads on the internet.
    - adamc 2y ago
      Not my experience of youtube at all, but I primarily watch longer, more analytical content. It almost all has ads.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >The vast majority of content has no ads. you're only pedantically correct in the sense that most videos on the internet have under 10 views. Practically speaking, I'd be surprised if you can watch any video from a content creator with > 10k subs and not have some sort of sponsored segment.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yeah this is the problem. You still need sponsorblock to make it watchable even if you subscribe. Then you might as well go the full way and adblock. If YouTube would force content creators to upload sponsor-free versions for premium subscribers, the subscription might actually be worth it.
hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
>Most companies do not offer a reduced ad load in exchange for your subscription money. And the never ending struggle to increase/maintain subscriptions for some companies probably has something to do with that. For me personally, and I expect a not insignificant portion of users, paying for a subscription is primarily to remove advertising completely. Anything else means its not worth subscribing, so not offering that level of option rules us out as customers. I've spent a minor amount of time and energy reducing the amount of advertising I see, from (pre-streaming) downloading shows I already pay for legal access to with commercials removed with automated systems, to being an early adopter of streaming services and dropping cable, locally running pi-hole on top of ad-blockers and using VPN's, privacy focused browsers etc. The payoff has been immense for my family, to the point watching TV in other locations and being bombarded by advertising is jarring and uncomfortable, and the manipulation tactics become more obvious and gross the less you inundate yourself with them. Obviously you can't get away from all advertising, indirect, product placement etc. is everywhere, but I found a significant improvement in quality of life. I would also make the argument that social media engagement hacking at its root traces to advertising and we blame social media for the problems when advertising was the true problem. Advertising as a revenue stream results in trying to optimize and improve engagement, often by gamifying or moving towards sensationalism to drive up numbers to increase revenue, most of which is negative for the user and little actually positive.
- grahamj 2y ago
  > For me personally, and I expect a not insignificant portion of users, paying for a subscription is primarily to remove advertising completely. I also put quite a bit of effort into removing ads from my and my family's eyeballs. I hate them. But because of that I already don't see ads on The Verge so for me a sub isn't about removing ads at all. I'll sub to support the work and whatever other perks come along with it (full-text RSS for one)
tootie 2y ago
Yeah the classifieds business was huge for local news and Craigslist murdered it. Now ad revenue is declining. The result is subscriptions and paywalls.
adamc 2y ago
They capture the reality (for many of us). I stopped subscribing to the NYT because they insisted on showing subscribers ads. They can do what they want, but I don't really care if businesses that rely on ads go bankrupt.
barnabee 2y ago
The only laudable move is to reject all forms of tracking and targeted ads as a matter of principle and make sure there’s at least one completely ad-free option. There are few (if any) media businesses I care about enough to compromise on my requirements just to help them stay in business. Certainly not The Verge. As for me, I’m happy to either not see the content or use workarounds that let me see it for free with no ads, i.e. ad-blockers + reader mode and services like archive.ph.
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ary 2y ago
The realities of the news business are fine, but the realities of the adtech business are not. As a consumer I very much want profiling and targeting to die off. Were the ads run on the web not built on a separate business that attempts to violate the reasonable sense of privacy the average person expects, and didn’t attempt to warp consumer’s expectations of privacy, I think there would be less objections.

0x0203 2y ago

I've said it before, but I feel like I need to keep saying it: If the people actually using/consuming a product aren't willing to pay the cost required to make/produce said product, then that's probably a good indicator that the product doesn't have enough value to justify its existence. If the Verge can't convince enough people to pay for their output, I'd argue it's not worth keeping around. Advertising ruins the producer/consumer relationship and incentivizes behaviors that disadvantage the consumer and push the producer away from their original purpose. If the Verge wants to diversify income, then they should provide a product that has value to a wider audience. That doesn't mean that every single person consuming/using the product needs to pay either. Patreon and similar services have proven that if what you make is of high enough quality and provides enough value, it's possible to convince a large enough subset of the consumers to pay enough to cover the costs of production. Especially with online services where the cost difference between producing for 1 person vs 1000 is nearly negligible. The few can, and often do, subsidize the many. And if that changes over time, then the product ceases to be valuable enough to be worth producing and should simply stop being made. And I'd say this is even true of news and things that people might argue are for the public good. In my opinion, most "news" today isn't actual informative news and doesn't really serve the public. But of the vanishing little left that does, if it informs and educates the citizenry in a way that improves the lives and stability of the country as a whole, and if its natural cost is more than can be reasonably covered by willing consumers, then there's a reasonable argument for covering the cost with taxes. Put sufficient legal barriers between the government funding and the content being produced to prevent government manipulation/propaganda and make sure the press can operate unimpeded. My best idea for such a government funded news source is to write into law that said news source's budget is dependent solely upon country population and country GDP, all staffing decisions are made internally, and leaders are decided by citizen vote, but I'm sure there are other ways people can come up with for maintaining a free but government/tax funded press agency. But ad-funded (of which I think even public radio/tv has effectively become), creates perverse incentives that drive the mission away from actually informing and educating. People can still pay for tech reviews, or travel advice, talking head current events opinion shows, or whatever news is in its current form if they want. Privately owned/operated press can still exist if it's useful enough for people to find it valuable and worth the cost. But advertising just ruins everything eventually.

heresie-dabord 2y ago
> If the people actually using/consuming a product aren't willing to pay the cost required to make/produce said product, then that's probably a good indicator that the product doesn't have enough value to justify its existence. This is not true. In many cases, we can see that people value a service by their returning usage, but... they often want other people to pay for it.
kasey_junk 2y ago
“Eventually” is doing a ton of heavy lifting in your argument. Ads have been a primary revenue driver for news media going back hundreds of years, including to when the US was codifying the civic value of news into its governing principles. The idea that revenue choice is binary or that if you have to use ads you shouldn’t be in business is a very modern one, and one that’s outside of historical norms.
- 0x0203 2y ago
  The idea that it's wrong to use slavery as a cheap labor force is also modern and outside historical norms. Just because it's historically prevalent doesn't make something right or even good/acceptable. Some things based on historical norms are good. Some clearly aren't. And it seems to me a bit disingenuous to ignore the technological changes and the speed, pervasiveness, and invasiveness with which advertising is now done compared to the historical context being appealed to. Even if one grants that advertising wasn't "as bad" back then, that doesn't make what we have now acceptable.
  - kasey_junk 2y ago
    I’m more commenting on the idea that ads ruin things over time. If that’s the case then it’s a hundreds of year timescale (or news media was ruined long ago).
ghaff 2y ago
There are a ton of things that many people would like but aren't willing to pay for. Would I like a personal chef and a personal driver at my beck and call? Sure. But I'm not willing to pay what that would cost for routine use. I do pay for some scheduled and infrequent personal care services. Also, government-funded comes with its own strings which may become more obvious than you like in the coming years.

eqvinox 2y ago

I think you're missing the point. There's a reasonable number of people who are willing to pay for content like this, but only if they actually get an ad-free experience in exchange. The business decision The Verge needs to make is whether they want to try to reach these people or not, since these people won't pay for a model that still has ads. (There could of course be 2 subscription levels at different prices, one that still has some ads… but that's also extra work and a different consumer experience.) I don't think newspaper ads are a good analogy either since the consumption model of a dead-tree newspaper isn't such that you get the ads thrown into your face when trying to read an article. And classifieds specifically I wouldn't even call ads, more of a community note board service.

cons0le 2y ago
Heck, if online ads didn't move around and pop up in front of the screen, less people would block them. But the reality is that companies are too greedy, and will never draw the line and say "this is enough" . I can't afford to subscribe to the dozens of sites I glance at everyday for 2 minutes. Quite frankly as someone that grew up with the "old" internet, I don't like the idea of paying for every single site I use. It feels like making every road a toll road.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  > But the reality is that companies are too greedy I don't think this is true. Ads get worse and more hostile because it so easily turns into a race to the bottom. Worse ads devalue the page and lower the CPM, which leads to websites to add more ads, which lowers everything again.
shortformblog 2y ago
I am not missing the point. Rather, the point is so small as to not be financially worth it for them. I am saying that The Verge made a business decision to balance ad load and subscriber cost to potentially bring in more subscribers. They probably did the math and realized that charging people $15 a month would not bring in many subscribers, and that they could have charged $5 a month with regular ad load, but they found this $7 sweet spot where they could give people the best of both worlds. And the $50 model means people are more committed long-term making it more valuable for them. I would guess that “reduced ad load” means that they would only put premium advertisers, like the stuff you would see in glossy magazines, in front of those readers. I trust given how careful they were with rolling this out that they did the math and tried to strike a balance to please the most people.

passwordoops 2y ago

True. And from what I understood, the Verge is offering two tiers - less ads and no ads. You can pay for the one you think is worthwhile. As a consumer I definitely lean on the "if I'm paying a subscription, I expect zero ads" side of the fence. It just has to be worth the additional price for me (The Verge is not)

eqvinox 2y ago
https://www.theverge.com/subscribe https://www.theverge.com/subscribe only has a monthly and annual option, and it doesn't look like either of them is "no ads"? The annual one is just cheaper and has some magazine?
GraemeMeyer 2y ago
There is no “no ad” tier. It’s full ads and reduced ads only
raverbashing 2y ago
Yeah, the economics of it make sense. The optics of it is awful though.
yunwal 2y ago
The no ad tier being use an adblocker?

Loic 2y ago

> Most companies do not offer a reduced ad load in exchange for your subscription money. At least in Germany, this has changed quite a lot. The publishers are naming the offers "Pur Abo" or similar. This is not perfect as one analysis[0] is showing, but for me, on the good way. [0]: https://netzpolitik.org/2020/nicht-ganz-ohne/ https://netzpolitik.org/2020/nicht-ganz-ohne/ (in German) Edit: Added German analysis of these offers.

shortformblog 2y ago
Intriguing. I know the German media market is very different from the American one—back in my D.C. days, when I was still at the WaPo Express, I met a German journalist who was working in the U.S. and I remember her explaining to me how different the rules were for promotion and social media and such. I do think The Verge offering this could lead other U.S. publishers to follow suit, especially if it’s successful.
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  Just wanted to say I used to love reading the Express on the Metro in the morning.

manuelmoreale 2y ago

I’ll guarantee you that it doesn’t make me feel any better to write this type of posts. I’m just exhausted by the modern web. As for the other point you’re making, that’s complete nonsense. You don’t differentiate your revenue streams by serving a sub par product to your paying customers. Serve those stupid ads to free users, treat your paying customers with respect.

shortformblog 2y ago
Gonna be straight up with you: I feel like you would have never thought about this had they not mentioned it, because so few media outlets are even thinking about reducing ad load for paid subscribers. As someone in media, I’m tired of well-intentioned media outlets try to strike a reasonable balance only to get yelled at for it like they aren’t already walking a tightrope. They have staffs of people to pay for, payroll. Travel budgets. Offices. Legal bills. And that they get hell for trying to give an inch, in my opinion, sucks. If you want them to offer an ad-free tier, tell them that directly! Given that they are clearly thinking about it suggests they might listen to you. But your binary way of approaching this is not helping and ultimately discourages companies who want to wean themselves off of adtech. Ripping off the band-aid is a lot harder than you’re making it out to be.
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  > If you want them to offer an ad-free tier, tell them that directly! Given that they are clearly thinking about it suggests they might listen to you. The first thing I did the other day was emailing Nilay Patel, editor in chief at The Verge, to share my thoughts on the subject. That’s before I posted on my site. As for “ripping off the band aid”, again, that’s nonsense. I’m not saying they should drop ads. They should figure out how much a user is worth and then price their membership accordingly. The vast, vast majority won’t switch anyway because that’s the reality of today’s web. As for your first point, I’d not have noticed that because I run multiple adblockers everywhere and I am THRILLED that I can now support in other ways.
- romanows 2y ago
  I've asked NYT, WaPo, and the non-profit Chicago Sun Times for an ad-free tier (no ads displayed in their apps) and they've all said "we don't offer an ad-free tier".

bambax 2y ago

Okay, and probably true, but the difference with newspaper is, it would be prohibitively expensive to produce different versions of the same newspaper for different subscription options, while it's trivial to do on the web. Why not offer an ad-free tier?

xixixao 2y ago
The richest people, hence the most valuable for advertisers, would buy it. This significantly affects the whole ad business value. Such that the ad-free tier would have to be priced too high. It’s more profitable to “force” everyone to watch ads. I’m afraid.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Yep. Elephant in the room of media economics. Look at ads on daytime broadcast TV and it is: medicare advantage, something you can get from medicare, a medicare scam, personal injury lawyer, some drug your insurance might pay for, personal injury lawyer #2. Ads for something you spend your own money on are few and far between (maybe you will get a car ad because if nobody bought a car who'd get hit by a car and call William Matar?) People in that demographic don't have money to spend so they get subprime ads. In the day newspapers and magazines thought about the balance of ad and subscription revenue a lot. On top of (1) people have money for a subscription being better qualified than people who don't, (2) people who are motivated to get a subscription are qualified because they care about the topic (you can get a free magazine about construction equipment but you'd better convince them you are really in the industry) and (3) in the current era, subscribers give up their name and other personal details and will be more definitely tracked.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    You see the same effect with twitter's advertiser exodus since it was acquired. It was not long ago you'd see everything on twitter: prominent fashion brands, car companies, big name electronics, everything you'd expect from a healthy ad ecosystem. Now it's basically nothing but crypto scams, reverse mortgages, supplements, dude wipes and pills that make your dick work. Like you can feel whatever you feel about that, but it's a clear, marked shift.

eterevsky 2y ago

It is always possible to have several tiers of subscriptions, a cheap tier with some additional feature and ads, and a higher tier with no ads at all. I am perfectly willing to pay extra to support a website or service that I'm using, but only if it removes all ads.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
The problem is: advertisers will argue that if you're offering a tier of service that removes ads, that's specifically going to be the most appealing to the group of your user-base that has the most money to spend and whom is most ready to spend it, evidenced by the fact that they have subscribed to your ad-free tier, and is therefore worth the most in terms of reaching with ads. Those people are self-selecting as the most responsive to being appealed to to buy things, which is what your advertisers want. This is why the "subscribe to remove ads" thing never took off in a big way. Users love it, but advertisers hate it and it craters the value of the ad space you sell to whomever doesn't think it's worth it/can't afford it.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  yikes. that makes sense for an advertiser but also fuck that.
- justinclift 2y ago
  > This is why the "subscribe to remove ads" thing never took off in a big way [...] advertisers hate it My heart bleeds for the poor advertisers. /s Actually, no it doesn't. Not even a little bit.
  - adamc 2y ago
    Not even a smidgen. If your business plan is built around advertising, I hope your business goes broke. On this, no compromises.
- benj111 2y ago
  Surely in this reverse Catch-22 hypothetical anyone who is willing to pay to escape ads is therefore worth more, so they would need to be served fewer ads for the same income. So the subscription should be free. And with less ads.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

> That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. My assumption is that the salaries of reporters, editors was paid for by ads. The nominal fee for the paper was to pay for the pulp, ink. I mean if you just printed up millions of papers and gave them away, people would pick them up simply as raw material for lining their bird cages, for papier-mâché, to insulate their cardboard box home on the corner of 12th and Main.....

shortformblog 2y ago
I worked at a number of free tabloid newspapers in my day (one small-town exurban, one mid-sized car-centric metro area, one metro area where most people took public transit) and I will say that most people did not do this. Usually they just left the papers on the train or at the coffee shop. Nonetheless, the first half of your point—the ads usually paid for all the reporting—is correct.
ghaff 2y ago
Right. It is/was just a big bucket of money and obviously there were free papers given away on college campuses and subway stations. But, at least back in the day, newspaper subscriptions and newsstand/put your quarter in boxes basically paid for creating and delivering the physical copies. The generally dire journalism situation these days is there is mostly no physical distribution and physical advertising dollars have become digital dimes. And local news--which was never a really thriving business--is basically dead.
snowwrestler 2y ago
Quite a lot of papers were, and still are, given out for free. My city still supports 3 separate print newspapers that are free in coffee shops, libraries, corner boxes, etc. They’re a great way to keep up with the actions and gripes of the local community. Being such small operations, there is very light editing and the reporter’s point of view often comes through pretty clearly. All paid for via ads from local businesses. Quite a lot of the ads are from real estate agents, which I think reflects the belief that a lot of tourists are picking up the papers in addition to residents.

nubinetwork 2y ago

Freemium gets abused, just look at YouTube... give them money and they still run ads...

wat10000 2y ago
No they don’t.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  Apparently they were showing some users football ads and support said that's expected. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42131778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42131778
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Youtube =/= Youtube Music. I can't speak to the latter ( I miss Google Play Music), but I have yet to receive a normal ad on Youtube premium.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago

> That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. Which leads to the conclusion that the company that most disrupted the newspaper industry was not Google or Facebook but Craigslist.

belorn 2y ago

It is fairly common in a large number of industries that a large part of the valuable portion of the products get subsidized by underhanded "immoral" side of the same industry. A (in)famous example is the practice of paying for expensive ink with excessive anti-customer practices in order to keep the prices of printers low. The printing manufacturers get multiple revenue streams that are more stable over time, and printers become accessible to more people. What is there to not like about it? The biggest problem is that anti-consumer behavior causes harm. With advertisement it brings disinformation, spying, abuse of the most vulnerable in society, general distrust, are often a crime (scams, fraud, targets children, and usually ignore local advertisement laws), and siphons money to a third party which usually is outside of the country and do not pay taxes. The benefits of anti-consumer behavior are generally not worth the downsides.

Havoc 2y ago

Loads of companies out there rely on a single revenue stream. If you sell a single product you get a single revenue stream. Having a company double dip and concluding that's somehow laudable is absurd. >People won’t pay $5 a day to subscribe to a newspaper Because the product isn't delivering $5 worth of perceived value per day. Trying to extract $5 anyway via stuff like this is the wrong answer.

madeofpalk 2y ago

"Less ads" is the easy way to describe what they're offering, but I believe what they're doing is not just 50% less ad spots, but rather paying will remove all third party ad networks from the site, leaving first party ads only. > we’ll get rid of all the chumboxes and third-party programmatic ads, cut down the overall number of ad units, and only fill what’s left with high-quality ads directly sold by Vox Media If you think all advertising is immoral, then this probably doesn't do anything for you. However, if you have privacy and performance concerns, this is a big win I think. Generally I like what the verge does, and I would gladly pay if it included their podcast being ad free. The Verge’s podcast is the only podcast I listen to that I don’t pay for, and it’s full of repeating programmatic ads for crypto companies, sports betting, and cars.

shortformblog 2y ago
This is a good way to put it. Honestly, it sounds like they have a messaging challenge that they need to solve around this.
chrisrhoden 2y ago
In various contexts, you would draw the distinction here between `ads` (that is, marketing sold against large swaths of content) and `sponsorships` (marketing sold against a small targeted set of content) but the distinction is subtle and the terms are pretty overloaded.
nyclounge 2y ago
That is what brave is doing. If we are going down this getting money for ads road, then let's just pick the lesser of all evils.

plagiarist 2y ago

Something laudable? They're trying to sell subscriptions that people will buy. It's completely normal to criticize their offering. I agree with the criticism and you don't, that's all fine, too.

ChrisRR 2y ago

Exactly. This has been the case for decades. Newspapers have had advertising despite no being free, but if they didn't they would be so much more expensive

kshahkshah 2y ago

Don’t care. One or the other not those figure way a way to make it work. I’m furious when I pay for add free and I still am subject to ads.

ksec 2y ago

This feels such a breath of fresh air, especially being the top comment and coming from a 2009 account. >This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it. Ads is evil has been a thing on HN for a very very long time.

shortformblog 2y ago
It’s because I’m a nerd with a background in journalism, and have been around the realities of a lot of this stuff for a while.
- ksec 2y ago
  Well at least HN is at the point where you could write it out and not get any personal attack. So things are improving. In 2016 - 2020 it wouldn't even be upvoted in the first place. I also dont think you need to be in journalism to understand the business case around it. People just need to understand business, or i.e the realities. But despite the swing back to somewhat moderate discussions, HN's pro business stance have been on the decline from the start and shows no kind of recovering. So please continue to chime in when you can. It certainly help to balance the dynamics of discussion.
wat10000 2y ago
Ads is evil has been a human thing for many times longer. Everybody hates them. At best, some accept ads as a necessary evil. It’s a dire combination: tremendously irritating and adding absolutely zero value to the world.

ghaff 2y ago

As I recall, newspaper subscriptions basically paid for the distribution cost of physical copies. Someone like the New York Times still has ads for digital subscribers but they're not crazy pop-ups all over the place. I'd probably prefer they weren't there but they don't really detract from my reading experience. I get that some people vehemently hate ads and most marketing.

gizmo 2y ago

One way to describe reality is to argue that media organizations like Vox can't survive if they don't show ads to their paid subscribers. Another way to describe reality is that people can choose to subscribe to various substacks or newsletters instead. On those platforms subscribers get zero ads, they get more in depth and more thoughtful articles, and because the system has much less overhead modest subscription revenue is sufficient. Vox also does video reviews, but then again, there are also many high quality tech youtubers. Vox certainly has the right to charge for a subscription and then serve the subscribers ads. And people have a right to walk away from a bad deal. Vox could disappear tomorrow at no great loss to society. We might like some of the reporting Vox does, but we don't need it. Vox media has raised about 450m (according to the first google result). Modest profitability is not enough for Vox Media because they need to secure a significant exit for their investors. This puts them at odds with their readers and subscribers. Not that laudable if you ask me. They made a bet they were going to disrupt traditional media and become a new great media platform. But now it looks like Vox itself is getting disrupted. Like newspapers of old clinging to a business model that no longer exists.

LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
Well put. Though I couldn't care less about 'Fox noise', I'm doing that subscription of individuals, sometimes, though reluctantly because the methods of payment suck from my POV.

nltatsy 2y ago

The difference is that newspapers had tasteful ads. I didn't mind seeing a Rolex or an expensive perfume, exquisitely photographed, in the Financial Times. Most of the Internet ads are medical issues, financial scams, weight loss scams etc. Most of these are accompanied by disgusting pictures. These ads combine the worst of classic Email spam and the yellow press. Give me better ads and I might switch off the adblocker. I'd even tolerate a banner Coca Cola ad if done tastefully and if it is the only ad on the page.

marcosdumay 2y ago
> I might switch off the adblocker There's a high likelihood that your adblocker won't be able to block those anyway. But no, you probably won't switch it off. That's because you can only know the ad quality after you've been exposed to them, and after your computer has run their code, and after you've faced the risk of them maintaining the universal, persistent eavesdrop on your life.

Tade0 2y ago

> It also reduces the cost of the subscription for you, the end user. But I don't want to pay less. I want my data to not be sold to the highest bidder, that's all. As it stands there's no option for people like me other than not subscribing. This is very much like the situation with smartphones these days: they cost less because you get a bunch of bloatware that you can't uninstall. I don't want that on my device, so I went with an offering deemed "overpriced" because it has less of such crap than others and thus costs about $250 more. Ideally it should be zero, but that's the best I could get.

conductr 2y ago
The fact is people like you are in the minority and there’s no reason for a company to ever even entertain modifications to their product/service to cater to your wants This might seem common on HN but IRL people don’t give much attention to ad related privacy and are probably much more concerned with the fact they have to fork over a CC and a few bucks
grahamj 2y ago
> I want my data to not be sold to the highest bidder, that's all. sigh I wish this was easier to achieve. But at least in the case of The Verge the sub removes third party ads so it should increase privacy even if it doesn't remove all the ads.

dghughes 2y ago

> That’s why newspapers had classified ads, I don't recall in the past a company needing my identity required or be tracked just because I bought a newspaper. I pay the $1 for the newspaper and no more interaction or relationship after that. Ads are OK but why do all the ad companies need to track me and know my movements and just to show me an ad? It's basically malware, stalking. Ads are zero advantage to me the consumer for what I lose in privacy.

fragmede 2y ago
[flagged]
- WickyNilliams 2y ago
  > What am I losing..? An ever increasing amount of privacy. The ad industry will never be satisfied with the amount of data they collect now. They will always want more. This insatiable appetite for tracking and data represents a slow erosion of our privacy. Building unimaginable surveillance machinery for what? So that I might buy something online once every few years? It's casting an extremely large net to catch extremely small fries. The means do not justify the ends. I think relevant, contextual ads are the best alternative. I'm more likely to eg buy something related to what I'm reading than I am to buy a mattress advertised to me across a million websites (a mattress that I've probably already bought I should add!). That doesn't require intense tracking and surveillance across the web. It just requires understanding the context in which the ads are placed. And it's essentially how marketing worked prior to digital advertising
  - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
    > If I'm trying to sell men's shampoo I wouldn't want to waste money putting ads for it in a women's magazine. Maybe women want to groom their men really good? Including hairs?

bogwog 2y ago

> miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. Why would I, as a consumer, compromise on what I want to make some MBA's life easier? That almost sounds like corporate welfare. Businesses sign up to take risks the moment they're created. A news organization doesn't need to be in business. There is nothing unjust or morally wrong with letting a business shutdown because they couldn't figure out a sustainable way to be profitable (assuming for sake of argument that most people don't subscribe due to the ads, which idk if that would really happen). > This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it. The OP is a customer of the Verge who is rejecting their offer for a new subscription service they don't like. That's called "voting with your wallet", and its the free market working as intended.

knorker 2y ago
Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media (mainstream and not). Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? So that it's feasible to keep producing what you actually want. I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an article whose headline sounds interesting, or someone recommended. Subscribe, even with a free trial? Pass. The free market is great. But we should not deny it when it leads to bad outcomes. If we do, then we're no better than those who say "real communism has never been tried".
- bogwog 2y ago
  The fake news situation, like all (well, most at least) failures of the free market are solvable with regulations. I don't think any rational person would disagree that it should be illegal to deliberately spread misinformation and lies. We banned selling cigarettes to minors, we banned drugs, we (theoretically) banned monopolies, and we should be able to ban fake news. But it is currently a political weapon being wielded by a political party. I don't expect that problem will be solved any time soon, but it's not fair to blame that on capitalism. Politicians ruin everything no matter what economic system they're in. > Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? So that it's feasible to keep producing what you actually want. But I don't want ad supported journalism!

dfxm12 2y ago

you don’t get to double dip and also sell my data to your advertisers and earn more on the side. Print ads don't get your personal data and sell them to who knows who. Internet ads have become synonymous with this practice. Comparing them to print ads without this consideration is disingenuous.

alexvitkov 2y ago

This really doesn't add up to me. I don't have the numbers, but I would assume that: 1. A very small percentage of website visitors will end up paying for a subscription. 2. They make way less than $5 per user per month from ads. The money they'd lose by providing an ad-free experience to paying customers should be a rounding error. Removing ads will also increase conversion, but who knows whether or not that will be enough to offset the revenue lost. I don't particularly care about their "business reality" - if you're an online news outlet you're not paying the costs of printing and distribution - your expenses are just journalist salaries and the marginal costs of keeping a website running. If you need to charge anything close to $5 per user per day to keep such an operation running, you should be out of business.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
2) is because of 1). They make way less than $5/user/month, but here's thousands of users to close that gap. So the paid users are a smaller slice than you'd guess at first blush. >if you need to charge anything close to $5 per user per day to keep such an operation running, you should be out of business. That's just American labor in a nutshell. if a jounralist is making full time national minimum wage ($7.25, 40 hours a week), that's very roughly $1000/month post tax. that very pooly paid jounalist needs 200 subcribers to sustain them. \ costs are going up, but readership and revenue is not. This doesn't end well for anyone. And yes, many businesses are dying right now. >I don't particularly care about their "business reality" if you don't care about them, I'm not sure why they'd care about your opinions on how they run.

adamtaylor_13 2y ago

Reality and principles don't always align. There's a "rubber meets road" moment where you have to decide what your principles are worth. I do not believe there was any rationale behind this pricing decision. I believe it is pure greed, and you're not likely to change my mind. I clutch my principles rather tightly, especially in cases like this. I will never pay for a streaming service whose first payment tier is "less ads", nor will I ever pay for a _newspaper_ of all things whose first premium tier is "less ads". I don't think double-dipping is laudable, and I don't think we should encourage it. Their (in)ability to fund their business isn't my problem, frankly.

freetinker 2y ago

From a UX perspective, there’s really no way to measure “fewer ads”. Customers with subscriptions aren’t doing A/B tests and feeling satisfied that they’re seeing fewer ads. They’re seeing ads. Still a subpar experience. The “fewer ads” narrative exists on some MBA/bean counter’s spreadsheet. This should be an absolute benefit, not a relative benefit. Who’s to say the number of ads won’t ratchet up in the future? Almost surely will. Let’s say a subscription customer sees 50 ads today vs 100 a non-subscription customer sees. Tomorrow, they 2x that – sub customer sees 100 ads, non-sub customer sees 200. Does a sub customer derive smug satisfaction that they’re seeing fewer ads than a non-sub customer? How would one even know? They’re just seeing ads. The correct amount of ads for a subscription service (from a UX perspective) is zero.

hombre_fatal 2y ago
1. The Verge's post says they are paywalling some of their content, so the offering seems more than just reduced ads. 2. People do notice when $7/mo is cheaper than $16/mo which is possible because there are still ads.

wat10000 2y ago

There are plenty of subscription services out there that are ad-free. YouTube does it, I think all the various music streaming services do it, most if not all of the video streaming services have an ad-free tier. Beyond the media realm, my cell phone service doesn’t package ads with my monthly subscription, nor my home internet service. I could go on. What narrow idea of “a media business” must have ads even when you pay, and why do they have to be different from everything else?

adamc 2y ago
Youtube does not do it. You stop seeing youtube's ads, which are obnoxious, but you still see the actual content author's ads.
- wat10000 2y ago
  YouTube shows you what you ask it to show you. The vast majority of content has no ads. You can easily go forever without seeing one. That’s like saying Verizon has ads because I see ads on the internet.
  - adamc 2y ago
    Not my experience of youtube at all, but I primarily watch longer, more analytical content. It almost all has ads.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >The vast majority of content has no ads. you're only pedantically correct in the sense that most videos on the internet have under 10 views. Practically speaking, I'd be surprised if you can watch any video from a content creator with > 10k subs and not have some sort of sponsored segment.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yeah this is the problem. You still need sponsorblock to make it watchable even if you subscribe. Then you might as well go the full way and adblock. If YouTube would force content creators to upload sponsor-free versions for premium subscribers, the subscription might actually be worth it.

hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago

>Most companies do not offer a reduced ad load in exchange for your subscription money. And the never ending struggle to increase/maintain subscriptions for some companies probably has something to do with that. For me personally, and I expect a not insignificant portion of users, paying for a subscription is primarily to remove advertising completely. Anything else means its not worth subscribing, so not offering that level of option rules us out as customers. I've spent a minor amount of time and energy reducing the amount of advertising I see, from (pre-streaming) downloading shows I already pay for legal access to with commercials removed with automated systems, to being an early adopter of streaming services and dropping cable, locally running pi-hole on top of ad-blockers and using VPN's, privacy focused browsers etc. The payoff has been immense for my family, to the point watching TV in other locations and being bombarded by advertising is jarring and uncomfortable, and the manipulation tactics become more obvious and gross the less you inundate yourself with them. Obviously you can't get away from all advertising, indirect, product placement etc. is everywhere, but I found a significant improvement in quality of life. I would also make the argument that social media engagement hacking at its root traces to advertising and we blame social media for the problems when advertising was the true problem. Advertising as a revenue stream results in trying to optimize and improve engagement, often by gamifying or moving towards sensationalism to drive up numbers to increase revenue, most of which is negative for the user and little actually positive.

grahamj 2y ago
> For me personally, and I expect a not insignificant portion of users, paying for a subscription is primarily to remove advertising completely. I also put quite a bit of effort into removing ads from my and my family's eyeballs. I hate them. But because of that I already don't see ads on The Verge so for me a sub isn't about removing ads at all. I'll sub to support the work and whatever other perks come along with it (full-text RSS for one)

tootie 2y ago

Yeah the classifieds business was huge for local news and Craigslist murdered it. Now ad revenue is declining. The result is subscriptions and paywalls.

adamc 2y ago

They capture the reality (for many of us). I stopped subscribing to the NYT because they insisted on showing subscribers ads. They can do what they want, but I don't really care if businesses that rely on ads go bankrupt.

barnabee 2y ago

The only laudable move is to reject all forms of tracking and targeted ads as a matter of principle and make sure there’s at least one completely ad-free option. There are few (if any) media businesses I care about enough to compromise on my requirements just to help them stay in business. Certainly not The Verge. As for me, I’m happy to either not see the content or use workarounds that let me see it for free with no ads, i.e. ad-blockers + reader mode and services like archive.ph.

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ary 2y ago

The realities of the news business are fine, but the realities of the adtech business are not. As a consumer I very much want profiling and targeting to die off. Were the ads run on the web not built on a separate business that attempts to violate the reasonable sense of privacy the average person expects, and didn’t attempt to warp consumer’s expectations of privacy, I think there would be less objections.