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"Viewing ads is part of the deal if users want content to be free, says Freitas." I would imagine that a log of ad-blocking users are fine with paying for

"Viewing ads is part of the deal if users want content to be free, says Freitas." I would imagine that a log of ad-blocking users are fine with paying for content if the price is reasonable (i.e. equivalent to the revenue a site gains from it's advertising sources). Any site owners complaining about ad-blockers is missing the opportunity to detect ad-blocking and try to sell that person an ad-free version of their service. Ideally this service would be a pay per view model, where I pay a fixed amount (like 5 cents to 10 cents per article read) or where I pay a fixed subscription fee (like $1 to $2 a month for unlimited articles). I did the math a while back with NY Times online advertising revenue and I remember the value gained from non-paying users to be around 70 cents per month per user. I don't know about you, but I would happily pay 70 cents or even a full dollar or two for access to the NY Times ad free. Unfortunately, when a site does introduce an ad-free paid version they try to extract like 5x or more of the revenue they gain from advertising. I don't know about others, but when I encounter that type of gouging, I just look elsewhere for my news. So Mssrs. Publisher, please offer a reasonable paid ad-free alternative or quit your bitching. Every ad you serve is an annoying distraction that distracts me, irritates me and slows down my browsing experience both in terms of bytes download and lines of javascript executed. I am completely within my right to block all outgoing requests to any host I deem negative to my web browsing experience via my /etc/hosts/ file. If you happen to serve ads from those sites and I can't view them because I block them, that isn't my problem it is yours. Want me to pay, give me the ability to do so and be fair with your prices. So long as you don't offer a paid service that I can buy and you support yourself via ads, you are not really considering me to be your customer, but your product. You are not in a position to complain when your product doesn't consent to being sold.

aspensmonster 13y ago
>I would imagine that a [lot] of ad-blocking users are fine with paying for content if the price is reasonable (i.e. equivalent to the revenue a site gains from it's advertising sources). But that's just it. Even if they could make money off a dollar-per-person-per-month model --even if they could pay all their bills and then some-- they certainly wouldn't make the switch. Ad sales always have the potential for growth, even if the size of your audience is the same. Offering base subscriptions puts a hard floor (edit: ceiling, not floor) on the amount of money you can make with any set number of viewers.
pseudonym 13y ago
While that's true, that's only the case for sites you regularly visit. If you get linked to a random site or blog post from HN, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, or what have you, your first thought is not going to be "gosh, I really want to pay for a subscription to this site". In fact, if you run into a paywall, you'll probably just bounce back to the site that linked you to the article and ask for the article text or a non-paywalled version of the same.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Maybe people would be happy (well, happier) with extreme micropayments. The use case you describe should be a rounding error as far as my bank account is concerned, but enough when multiplied by reasonable traffic to sustain online publishing. Does anyone know the actual value of a single ad impression?
  - joshvm 13y ago
    Depends on a large number of things. As an advertiser you can pay based on location on the site (e.g. the advertiser will pay more for a banner than a little side unit below the fold). Some adverts are pay per view, pay per click, some are commission based (referrer gets a cut). Sometimes it'll be a few dollars for a few thousand views, other times it'll be a few hundred dollars for a week's visibility. For click throughs, fractions of a cent to a few cents I guess. Commission is obviously worth a lot more (a few percent of the purchase price typically), but harder to convert users. Have a look at buysellads to get an idea of how this works. Unsurprisingly Adblock has a field day if you try and view the website with it turned on ;)
  - _delirium 13y ago
    > Does anyone know the actual value of a single ad impression? This is often summarized as RPM (revenue per mille) or eRPM (effective RPM), i.e. how much income a site's ads bring in per 1000 page impressions, regardless of how it's paid out (per-click, per-view, per affiliate purchase, etc.). And that varies hugely between sites, anywhere from below $1 to above $100. A typical case is around $5-10 for many publishers, I believe. So that's about 0.5-1.0¢ per page view.
serge2k 13y ago
It's a problem of tracking the payments and keeping track of everything at that point. If it's 2 dollars a month for 10 or so sites that isn't that much money but setting up 10 different credit card automatic payments is a pain in the ass. Then I lose a card and everything breaks. If we had a nice model to aggregate articles on one central site with profit sharing from subscriptions then it might be better.
- hack_edu 13y ago
  ... and thus another feudal aggregator platform is born.

aspensmonster 13y ago

>I would imagine that a [lot] of ad-blocking users are fine with paying for content if the price is reasonable (i.e. equivalent to the revenue a site gains from it's advertising sources). But that's just it. Even if they could make money off a dollar-per-person-per-month model --even if they could pay all their bills and then some-- they certainly wouldn't make the switch. Ad sales always have the potential for growth, even if the size of your audience is the same. Offering base subscriptions puts a hard floor (edit: ceiling, not floor) on the amount of money you can make with any set number of viewers.

pseudonym 13y ago

While that's true, that's only the case for sites you regularly visit. If you get linked to a random site or blog post from HN, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, or what have you, your first thought is not going to be "gosh, I really want to pay for a subscription to this site". In fact, if you run into a paywall, you'll probably just bounce back to the site that linked you to the article and ask for the article text or a non-paywalled version of the same.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
Maybe people would be happy (well, happier) with extreme micropayments. The use case you describe should be a rounding error as far as my bank account is concerned, but enough when multiplied by reasonable traffic to sustain online publishing. Does anyone know the actual value of a single ad impression?
- joshvm 13y ago
  Depends on a large number of things. As an advertiser you can pay based on location on the site (e.g. the advertiser will pay more for a banner than a little side unit below the fold). Some adverts are pay per view, pay per click, some are commission based (referrer gets a cut). Sometimes it'll be a few dollars for a few thousand views, other times it'll be a few hundred dollars for a week's visibility. For click throughs, fractions of a cent to a few cents I guess. Commission is obviously worth a lot more (a few percent of the purchase price typically), but harder to convert users. Have a look at buysellads to get an idea of how this works. Unsurprisingly Adblock has a field day if you try and view the website with it turned on ;)
- _delirium 13y ago
  > Does anyone know the actual value of a single ad impression? This is often summarized as RPM (revenue per mille) or eRPM (effective RPM), i.e. how much income a site's ads bring in per 1000 page impressions, regardless of how it's paid out (per-click, per-view, per affiliate purchase, etc.). And that varies hugely between sites, anywhere from below $1 to above $100. A typical case is around $5-10 for many publishers, I believe. So that's about 0.5-1.0¢ per page view.

serge2k 13y ago

It's a problem of tracking the payments and keeping track of everything at that point. If it's 2 dollars a month for 10 or so sites that isn't that much money but setting up 10 different credit card automatic payments is a pain in the ass. Then I lose a card and everything breaks. If we had a nice model to aggregate articles on one central site with profit sharing from subscriptions then it might be better.

hack_edu 13y ago
... and thus another feudal aggregator platform is born.