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The key assumption, I think, is here: > Among the top 10,000 sites that show third-party capable advertising, we find that typically 15% of users visit the sit
by arjie 12y ago
The key assumption, I think, is here:
> Among the top 10,000 sites that show third-party capable advertising, we find that typically 15% of users visit the site at least 10 times per month. If one-fourth of such loyal users ultimately subscribe to the site, we estimate that a monthly fee of $2 would generate revenue comparable to that earned from third-party capable advertising, based on current ad rates.
- eli 12y agoSeems like quite an assumption that 1/4 of loyal readers will pay for a website. They cite the NYTimes paywall as evidence, but the NYTimes is hardly a typical site or a typical brand.
- pessimizer 12y agoThat's probably due to the 15 odd years of a lack of micropayments on the web, though. I'd pay $2 monthly for every one of the (very few, maybe 15-20) sites that I visit in return for privacy guarantees and no irrelevant advertising.
- eli 12y agoUnfortunately it's difficult to pull off a model where users can pay to turn off ads because it drastically reduces the per-user value of the remaining ad impressions.
- cpeterso 12y agoFew people use ad blockers. Less than 7% of Firefox users have Adblock Plus installed: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility/33.0 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility/33.0
- jacques_chester 12y agoFunnily enough, I'm developing the technology for exactly this.
- cerenbudak 12y agoOne of the coauthors here. 1/4 was actually a conservative number compared to what was found by the NYTimes paywall study. Unfortunately, we do not have more comprehensive studies to cite for a more generalizable number. Note however that the price one needs to pay according to our analysis is much lower than NYTimes (~ 2 dollars per month) and an average user would need only 2-3 such subscriptions.