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As expected this is going to have a negative affect on ad revenues but what people forget is that publishers won't just accept lower revenues. They're going in
by BukhariH 11y ago
As expected this is going to have a negative affect on ad revenues but what people forget is that publishers won't just accept lower revenues.
They're going innovate. The easiest thing to implement would be a paywall but after the paywall we are going to see a rise in microtransactions for content.
That being said there are advantages to the subscription model. Maybe, publishers will stop posting click-baity headlines and misleading content if they know they've got users locked down and dont have to worry about them going to other sources as much.
But, on the other hand microtransactions are going to make content even more click-baity in order to convince users to pay for the content based on a headline and abstract.
- alecco 11y agoGood, no more blogspam/clickbait crap.
- sergiotapia 11y agoPrecisely! I'm all for this quite honestly.
- biafra 11y agoAnother way publishers can fight this, is to not show the content if they detect ad blocking.
- tonyblundell 11y agoThe web is 20 years old. I think if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Outside of a few niches, people just aren't willing to pay to read websites. What I could see happening is premium content being bundled by ISPs. Pay for X package from Y ISP, get content from A, B and C websites. Kind-of like how TV channels are bundled. In all likelihood though, I think advertising will continue as is. Advertisers will just come up with cleverer ways of presenting it.
- FroshKiller 11y ago>The web is 20 years old. I think if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now. That's a failure of imagination right there. It took decades for cable to come along and disrupt broadcast television. You never know what's going to happen.
- hellofunk 11y agoBefore the web, it was quite standard for nearly everyone to pay for their daily newspaper. People obviously have no problem paying a little for the news. Take away quality free content, and natural human interest will lead to a successful pay model, possibly.
- tonyblundell 11y agoTrue, but I don't think it necessarily follows that they'd pay for the same content digitally. One thing the web has shown us is that people still value tangible things differently to non-tangible things. You also have to consider the reason's people paid for newspapers... it might have been the only way to get reliable content... to purport a certain image, social status or political allegiance... to keep in-line with peers - did you see this? did you read that?.. simply to pass time. If you have a smartphone and five minutes to waste, you can cover all those bases without paying for a news article. You can use Facebook, Reddit, Youtube and discussion forums for subjects that interest you, for example. Remember in the 90s when online store catalogues were pretty much just uploads of print catalogues - designed with pages of content and no search functionality. Or when people tried to make 'online malls' - directories of stores people might want to use in one visit, like they would a brick and mortar mall? They didn't work because the analog to digital conversion isn't just a straight upload process. It's much more complicated than that. People interact with and consume digital content different to paper content. Just uploading and charging a few pence to read isn't going to work IMHO.
- hellofunk 11y agoMusic is somewhat intangible and widely available for free, but it appears it is also moving to a pay subscription model successfully.