4 ms·

Probably the bigger problem is that the more money you'd be willing to pay to get rid of ads, the more your eyeballs are worth to a potential advertiser. You'r

Probably the bigger problem is that the more money you'd be willing to pay to get rid of ads, the more your eyeballs are worth to a potential advertiser. You're demonstrating that you have disposable income that you're willing to part with to overcome an inconvenience.

michaelchisari 12y ago
> the bigger problem is that the more money you'd be willing to pay to get rid of ads, the more your eyeballs are worth to a potential advertiser I think that's a concern, but it's not a bigger problem than money laundering or illegal activity or anything else that micro-payment systems have had to deal with. With micro-payments, you can't deal in actual currency. You have to move around some kind of "Credits" that at some point get exchanged back to currency in bulk to a payment processor, otherwise the transaction fees are greater than the payments themselves. This is dollar signs in the eyes of anybody who likes to play games with international money. It's a space for cryptocurrency to be sure, but the push-based architecture makes recurring subscriptions a little tricky from a user standpoint. Not to mention that the user has to have cryptocurrency to begin with.
- tsotha 12y ago
  >With micro-payments, you can't deal in actual currency. You have to move around some kind of "Credits" that at some point get exchanged back to currency in bulk to a payment processor, otherwise the transaction fees are greater than the payments themselves. Which prompts me to wonder why transaction fees are so high.
  - KFW504 12y ago
    well, they aren't exactly priced on a cost basis
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    Because they are a cartel. It the marginal price for a transaction is pretty close to zero, so the fact that the price is noticable means that credit card transaction are not operating in an efficient market.
    - tsotha 12y ago
      Just because the marginal price is near zero doesn't mean you're not going to pay a lot. The marginal price for software is near zero as well. You may be right about it being a cartel, but the marginal price doesn't tell you much.
lsc 12y ago
>Probably the bigger problem is that the more money you'd be willing to pay to get rid of ads, the more your eyeballs are worth to a potential advertiser. You're demonstrating that you have disposable income that you're willing to part with to overcome an inconvenience. Hm. Conventional wisdom is that at least for websites making money off of adsense, you don't want to advertise to Engineers, because like most sophisticated customers they don't click on ads. My take is that the class of consumers willing to pay money to block ads is likely to be more sophisticated than average, and thus less likely to click on ads.
- romerro 12y ago
  Many common misconceptions here, the main one being that online advertising is completely click-dependent. The biggest share of the ad dollars is actually coming from brand-building campaings where dollars are spent for impressions that aren't even optimized for KPIs related to clicks.
  - lsc 12y ago
    >The biggest share of the ad dollars is actually coming from brand-building campaings where dollars are spent for impressions that aren't even optimized for KPIs related to clicks. Huh. That's interesting, because it certainly is my impression that most online advertising is click-based, but I have little experience of the high end. I know that I spend all my ad dollars on (or what I spent my ad dollars on when I spent ad dollars) are attempts at brand building. The thing is, if you really want to build your brand, you don't want the ads to be about you... you want the content to be about you. And that's kind of a different problem, at least if you are targeting sophisticated customers who won't read publications where the content is obviously bought.
    - blumkvist 12y ago
      If you include adwords-search in online advertising, cliks will dominate. However, if you look only at display (banners, links, video) then clicks are not dominant at all.
- 12y ago

michaelchisari 12y ago

> the bigger problem is that the more money you'd be willing to pay to get rid of ads, the more your eyeballs are worth to a potential advertiser I think that's a concern, but it's not a bigger problem than money laundering or illegal activity or anything else that micro-payment systems have had to deal with. With micro-payments, you can't deal in actual currency. You have to move around some kind of "Credits" that at some point get exchanged back to currency in bulk to a payment processor, otherwise the transaction fees are greater than the payments themselves. This is dollar signs in the eyes of anybody who likes to play games with international money. It's a space for cryptocurrency to be sure, but the push-based architecture makes recurring subscriptions a little tricky from a user standpoint. Not to mention that the user has to have cryptocurrency to begin with.

tsotha 12y ago
>With micro-payments, you can't deal in actual currency. You have to move around some kind of "Credits" that at some point get exchanged back to currency in bulk to a payment processor, otherwise the transaction fees are greater than the payments themselves. Which prompts me to wonder why transaction fees are so high.
- KFW504 12y ago
  well, they aren't exactly priced on a cost basis
- tomjen3 12y ago
  Because they are a cartel. It the marginal price for a transaction is pretty close to zero, so the fact that the price is noticable means that credit card transaction are not operating in an efficient market.
  - tsotha 12y ago
    Just because the marginal price is near zero doesn't mean you're not going to pay a lot. The marginal price for software is near zero as well. You may be right about it being a cartel, but the marginal price doesn't tell you much.

lsc 12y ago

>Probably the bigger problem is that the more money you'd be willing to pay to get rid of ads, the more your eyeballs are worth to a potential advertiser. You're demonstrating that you have disposable income that you're willing to part with to overcome an inconvenience. Hm. Conventional wisdom is that at least for websites making money off of adsense, you don't want to advertise to Engineers, because like most sophisticated customers they don't click on ads. My take is that the class of consumers willing to pay money to block ads is likely to be more sophisticated than average, and thus less likely to click on ads.

romerro 12y ago
Many common misconceptions here, the main one being that online advertising is completely click-dependent. The biggest share of the ad dollars is actually coming from brand-building campaings where dollars are spent for impressions that aren't even optimized for KPIs related to clicks.
- lsc 12y ago
  >The biggest share of the ad dollars is actually coming from brand-building campaings where dollars are spent for impressions that aren't even optimized for KPIs related to clicks. Huh. That's interesting, because it certainly is my impression that most online advertising is click-based, but I have little experience of the high end. I know that I spend all my ad dollars on (or what I spent my ad dollars on when I spent ad dollars) are attempts at brand building. The thing is, if you really want to build your brand, you don't want the ads to be about you... you want the content to be about you. And that's kind of a different problem, at least if you are targeting sophisticated customers who won't read publications where the content is obviously bought.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    If you include adwords-search in online advertising, cliks will dominate. However, if you look only at display (banners, links, video) then clicks are not dominant at all.
12y ago