I wish ad-supported services could look at my average usage (# of pages I’ve viewed, ads I’ve seen, etc), and give me an option to directly pay them the same amount they would have charged the advertisers for my slice of views/clicks/etc. No ads for me, they get paid as if they were serving me ads.
I’ll even put my credit card on file. Just show me a running receipt of the charges I’m running up. They get paid the same amount as an advertiser would pay them, I get to support a publication I like, everything’s transparent, and anyone can opt in or out. Don’t want ads? Pay your own way. Ok with ads? Let advertisers support your usage.
So assuming they’re PPC, how will they know what to charge you given that you won’t click any ads?
They can guess pretty accurately, I’m sure. Similar users with similar view/visit patterns. Computers are pretty good at this sort of thing.
Google has a service for this called ‘Contributor’. I tried it almost three years ago and it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere. Seems like a weak internal attempt that management likely wasn’t behind: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
I’ve always wondered why there’s not an open standard for this sort of thing, like “ad free option”. You can go to a site, opt in, and then won’t see ads on all participating publishers. Seems like a way for pubs to make $ off the 10%+ that currently block ads. Maybe Basecamp can roll out a standard here, similar to ‘Facebook Free’ 🙂
You should check out Coil which uses an open API called Web Monetization in order to pay the creator on your behalf in fractions of a penny _and_ in real-time. This way, sites can securely provide rewards to any users who have Web Monetization enabled, creating a self-sustaining economy.
This has only been recently possible using the Interledger protocol and digital assets such as XRP.
A viable third option outside of advertising and site-by-site subscription models.
The Brave browser (https://brave.com/) has a solutions using BAT (https://basicattentiontoken.org/)
The personal information economy imagined by some is based on a variation of this theme. But the human manages their identity centrally and,if opting to pay sub fees, splits the ad revenue with publisher.
I think that Brave browser has a model where the intermediary is removed and you as a user choose to give the content creator money directly. Also i that model you get payed a certain amount if you decide to allow the website to show you the adds,
I have thought about this while riding the subway trains here in NYC. How much would a monthly pass cost if they took down all the ads and left us with bare walls?
In regards to the internet ads, what is a rough guess of what the average user would pay, were they to opt in (and opt out of ads)?
Or, why not abandon the monetization of web publishing altogether? Drop the ads AND all tracking; stop the ad blocker arms race; speed up page loading; etc. As a society, we seem to be ok leaving other creative professionals to figure it out for themselves (e.g. artists, photographers). If web publishers want to get paid, shouldn’t they get a real job? /s
Isn’t this exactly what medium tried?
Check out football365.com – if you’re running an adblocker, they ask you to pay them 30c for the day.