4 ms·

I see your point, but the the alternative is we need a better solution; blocking ads doesn't mean the writing becomes corrupt and we give up and that's it. Adbl

I see your point, but the the alternative is we need a better solution; blocking ads doesn't mean the writing becomes corrupt and we give up and that's it. Adblocking will lead to content creators finding a better revenue source; there are a lot of people that don't want to compromise themselves by being a paid voice for corporate interests. Buzzfeed is a poor example; it's just garbage content that is being re-circulated by many different places. There are TONS of sites that have paywalls and/or ads on their sites and their writing is still compromised. So I think paying for content and getting advertisements out of good content is the solution to restore independence, but the price point needs to be right. I hate blocking ads (I whitelist sites I visit frequently with reasonable ads) but ads have become obnoxious, so AdBlock is a natural reaction to site owners treating users like shit. Sadly, a lot of reasonable sites with unobtrusive ads have gotten caught up in blacklists. I would pay for good news content if I could pay for a bundle of good content at a fair price. Even something like the NY Times is a hard sell; it feels weird given the wealth of sources and information we have access to these days. NY Times is a great source, but I don't want to only read a single source. And it quickly becomes unaffordable if you want to pay for a lot of sources of information. Spotify and similar providers solved this with music and I still think a better solution will come out eventually for news. There are a lot of people that want to pay a fair price for good content, but the current options are not very good.

mozumder 11y ago
Spotify isn't profitable. I don't know any subscription-based pure-play internet media company that's profitable. (Maybe Netflix? But we'll have to see how profitable they are now that other subscription services have recently launched.) The NYTimes is probably the highest-end as far as content quality is concerned, but if you're not going to pay for that, why would you pay for anything else? Absolutely no one is paying for content online. People pay for art. They don't pay for commodity, and everything online is information commodity. There's just too much low-value competing sources that are "good enough" for consumer interests. Given that, I think ad-blocking has largely been overstated as a concern for media sites. Among my own friends, I only know one person that uses ad-blockers. Ads aren't a problem that people worry about. In fact, for a good media property, ads are a draw. People buy fashion magazines and Sunday newspapers for the ads, for example.
- MaysonL 11y ago
  Absolutely no one is paying for content online. Techpinions, the Information, and Ben Thompson would all disagree.
  - mozumder 11y ago
    Those are industry sites, for professionals to use for their jobs. They're equivalent to academic journals. Bankers can pay Bloomberg $24,000/year for their terminal.
    - MaysonL 11y ago
      OK, how about Lynda.com? In other words, people who think the information will pay for itself, or is valuable in some other way, are willing to pay for it. That's a far cry from absolutely nobody.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- trimbo 11y ago
  > Absolutely no one is paying for content online "The Financial Times saw a sharp increase in profits in 2014, driven by growth in subscription and digital revenues and a record high circulation. The FT’s total circulation grew 10% year-on-year to nearly 720,000 across print and online. FT.com subscriptions grew 21% to almost 504,000, with digital now representing 70% of the FT’s total paying audience." http://aboutus.ft.com/2015/02/27/financial-times-2014-results/ http://aboutus.ft.com/2015/02/27/financial-times-2014-result...
  - mozumder 11y ago
    right. And about 320,000 people pay $24,000/year for a Bloomberg terminal. I still see them (FT, WSJ, BB, etc..) as a niche trade-specific media properties, with no relevance to people outside of the industry. Or to put it another way, you're saying "Sure, subscriptions on the internet can work.. all you need is everyone to be a banker!"
afarrell 11y ago
> Adblocking will lead to content creators finding a better revenue source; Is this true though? If you throw a child into the water and thereby force them to either sink or swim, it does not actually force them to swim.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 11y ago
  It's not going to change over night, but neither did music.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    Is music better for mundane artists to be able to make a living now than it was in the 90s?
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  Horrible analogy, but a percentage will, and a percentage will sink.
- eli 11y ago
  So far that hasn't been the case for newspapers, which have never really recovered from the decline in ad rates over the past few decades. Many smaller papers have gone out of business. Larger ones have cut back on expensive foreign correspondents and beat reporters.
- malandrew 11y ago
  If you throw a bunch of children into the water and thereby force them to either sink or swim, those that know how to swim will and those that don't will sink. This will filter out those that can't produce content that people are willing to pay for. Hopefully this will kill low quality content. Those producing high-quality valuable content will be recognized by those that know how to make money from quality content those partnerships will be the ones that learn to swim. Advertising supported content has increased the noise and drowned out the quality. It will be nice to once again hear more of the people with something worth saying.

mozumder 11y ago

Spotify isn't profitable. I don't know any subscription-based pure-play internet media company that's profitable. (Maybe Netflix? But we'll have to see how profitable they are now that other subscription services have recently launched.) The NYTimes is probably the highest-end as far as content quality is concerned, but if you're not going to pay for that, why would you pay for anything else? Absolutely no one is paying for content online. People pay for art. They don't pay for commodity, and everything online is information commodity. There's just too much low-value competing sources that are "good enough" for consumer interests. Given that, I think ad-blocking has largely been overstated as a concern for media sites. Among my own friends, I only know one person that uses ad-blockers. Ads aren't a problem that people worry about. In fact, for a good media property, ads are a draw. People buy fashion magazines and Sunday newspapers for the ads, for example.

MaysonL 11y ago
Absolutely no one is paying for content online. Techpinions, the Information, and Ben Thompson would all disagree.
- mozumder 11y ago
  Those are industry sites, for professionals to use for their jobs. They're equivalent to academic journals. Bankers can pay Bloomberg $24,000/year for their terminal.
  - MaysonL 11y ago
    OK, how about Lynda.com? In other words, people who think the information will pay for itself, or is valuable in some other way, are willing to pay for it. That's a far cry from absolutely nobody.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
trimbo 11y ago
> Absolutely no one is paying for content online "The Financial Times saw a sharp increase in profits in 2014, driven by growth in subscription and digital revenues and a record high circulation. The FT’s total circulation grew 10% year-on-year to nearly 720,000 across print and online. FT.com subscriptions grew 21% to almost 504,000, with digital now representing 70% of the FT’s total paying audience." http://aboutus.ft.com/2015/02/27/financial-times-2014-results/ http://aboutus.ft.com/2015/02/27/financial-times-2014-result...
- mozumder 11y ago
  right. And about 320,000 people pay $24,000/year for a Bloomberg terminal. I still see them (FT, WSJ, BB, etc..) as a niche trade-specific media properties, with no relevance to people outside of the industry. Or to put it another way, you're saying "Sure, subscriptions on the internet can work.. all you need is everyone to be a banker!"

afarrell 11y ago

> Adblocking will lead to content creators finding a better revenue source; Is this true though? If you throw a child into the water and thereby force them to either sink or swim, it does not actually force them to swim.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 11y ago
It's not going to change over night, but neither did music.
- afarrell 11y ago
  Is music better for mundane artists to be able to make a living now than it was in the 90s?
bsbechtel 11y ago
Horrible analogy, but a percentage will, and a percentage will sink.
eli 11y ago
So far that hasn't been the case for newspapers, which have never really recovered from the decline in ad rates over the past few decades. Many smaller papers have gone out of business. Larger ones have cut back on expensive foreign correspondents and beat reporters.
malandrew 11y ago
If you throw a bunch of children into the water and thereby force them to either sink or swim, those that know how to swim will and those that don't will sink. This will filter out those that can't produce content that people are willing to pay for. Hopefully this will kill low quality content. Those producing high-quality valuable content will be recognized by those that know how to make money from quality content those partnerships will be the ones that learn to swim. Advertising supported content has increased the noise and drowned out the quality. It will be nice to once again hear more of the people with something worth saying.