4 ms·

On your commute, you're passing a McDonald's store every day. You know it's there, but you never buy food there for whatever reason. Are you stealing? I'd rath

On your commute, you're passing a McDonald's store every day. You know it's there, but you never buy food there for whatever reason. Are you stealing? I'd rather pay the site directly if they'd stop displaying ads. Several companies experiment with those kinds of revenue stream: OkCupid shows you this [1] banner encouraging you to pay 5$ if you're using an ad blocker. Reddit has the "gilding" concept. While I don't know if that pays out at the end of the day, I'd rather pay the site directly than having them to rely on distracting and sometimes malicious ads which load 3 embedded flash player objects and destroy the site's performance. By relying on ads, sites naturally introduced a terrible usability. Notice how many times you encounter a complete page reload where a simple AJAX call would have done the job better? That's because you sell a certain number of page impressions to advertisers, and the sooner they're used up, the sooner you get paid. The complete system is a mess. [1] http://cdn.okccdn.com/media/img/template/image.png http://cdn.okccdn.com/media/img/template/image.png

pmelendez 12y ago
> On your commute, you're passing a McDonald's store every day. You know it's there, but you never buy food there for whatever reason. Are you stealing? That analogy doesn't work very well in this context. A more realistic example would if they were giving away cookies in exchange of you getting inside and see their advertising and one friends of yours gets inside and take several cookies so you and your other friends don't have see the ads. It wouldn't be stealing because the cookies are "free" but still you might feel like taking advantage. I am agree with you and I would rather pay for the site but many people won't and that's exactly why several content providing are having troubles with ad-blockers.
- VLM 12y ago
  If you want a physical cookie analogy, its more like going to a real estate open house knowing you have no interest whatsoever in buying that house, yet still eating a free cookie. You walk in, the house reeks of cat pee, no Fing way, but those are tasty looking cookies... I wouldn't break into your house and steal your cookies, but if you put up signs all over advertising your open house with free cookies, if you twist my arm enough I'll cave in and show up and eat a cookie. Just don't be annoyed at me when I don't buy the house. Practically no one purchases, anyway.
  - pmelendez 12y ago
    > Just don't be annoyed at me when I don't buy the house. Practically no one purchases, anyway. Exactly my point... just are just taking advantage of the "free content". And everybody go for the cookies. Then they will be stop offering cookies (even though there were really good cookies)
venomsnake 12y ago
> I'd rather pay the site directly if they'd stop displaying ads. Me too. Problem. All sites that offer subscription require way more money for it than their revenue I gave them by watching ads. There is no convenient way to give a couple of cents to a site, to replace lost revenue.
- rwmurrayVT 12y ago
  Tiny payments and payment gateway fees ~_~

pmelendez 12y ago

> On your commute, you're passing a McDonald's store every day. You know it's there, but you never buy food there for whatever reason. Are you stealing? That analogy doesn't work very well in this context. A more realistic example would if they were giving away cookies in exchange of you getting inside and see their advertising and one friends of yours gets inside and take several cookies so you and your other friends don't have see the ads. It wouldn't be stealing because the cookies are "free" but still you might feel like taking advantage. I am agree with you and I would rather pay for the site but many people won't and that's exactly why several content providing are having troubles with ad-blockers.

VLM 12y ago
If you want a physical cookie analogy, its more like going to a real estate open house knowing you have no interest whatsoever in buying that house, yet still eating a free cookie. You walk in, the house reeks of cat pee, no Fing way, but those are tasty looking cookies... I wouldn't break into your house and steal your cookies, but if you put up signs all over advertising your open house with free cookies, if you twist my arm enough I'll cave in and show up and eat a cookie. Just don't be annoyed at me when I don't buy the house. Practically no one purchases, anyway.
- pmelendez 12y ago
  > Just don't be annoyed at me when I don't buy the house. Practically no one purchases, anyway. Exactly my point... just are just taking advantage of the "free content". And everybody go for the cookies. Then they will be stop offering cookies (even though there were really good cookies)

venomsnake 12y ago

> I'd rather pay the site directly if they'd stop displaying ads. Me too. Problem. All sites that offer subscription require way more money for it than their revenue I gave them by watching ads. There is no convenient way to give a couple of cents to a site, to replace lost revenue.

rwmurrayVT 12y ago
Tiny payments and payment gateway fees ~_~