4 ms·

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 ba

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.

eqvinox 2y ago
I'd say that the range of actual consumer behavior is quite wide on this. I wonder if anyone has actual public numbers from any kind of similar situation (which, yes, isn't going to be comparable anyway, but anything even remotely close would be interesting.) From my personal bubble, I know there's a bunch of people that won't even consider a subscription that still contains ads; it's antithetical to their (and my) expectations. Whether they'd subscribe to an ad-free The Verge I don't know either; personally I don't consume The Verge aside from occasionally getting sent a link or two, so I wouldn't. I will also say that, were I interested in any Amazon Prime Video show that has ads, I'd rather torrent it. (I do pay for Nebula and Dropout, so no, I'm not a "would never pay for any subscription anyway" person.)