
Pay Google to stop seeing ads - FWeinb
https://contributor.google.com
======
criddell
Blocking ads motivates some people but many others are motivated by the desire
to not be tracked. When I read a paper magazine, nobody knows what pages I
flip through, what ads I read, no profile is being built, etc... Why can't ads
on the internet be as dumb?

For the past 20 years, I've been hearing how ads will be less annoying once
advertisers can target more effectively. I think the exact opposite has
happened. Look at some shoes on Zappos and the next week or two they are going
to follow you everywhere. For me, that's far more annoying than random
untargeted ads.

~~~
pajtai
This is true. But ads are more targeted not to make it less annoying for you,
but because people who sell stuff think they'll get a higher conversion rate
the more targeted they get.... and that's hard to argue with.

But I do think legislation to make you be tracked less would be awesome, but
it'd be fighting money.

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semi-extrinsic
> people who sell stuff think they'll get a higher conversion rate the more
> targeted they get.... and that's hard to argue with.

Is it really? For me, targeted ads come up for either a) products I have
already purchased or b) products I've looked at and then decided not to buy. I
got my wife an espresso grinder for Christmas, ordered on Dec. 10, but AdSense
is still showing me ads for grinders. There is exactly 0.00% chance of me
buying another one.

~~~
dangrossman
Campaign A: Show 10,000 random people ads for espresso grinders.

Campaign B: Show 10,000 people who recently looked at espresso grinders some
ads for them.

95% of the first group didn't know espresso grinders were a thing people
bought. The remainder probably aren't actively shopping for one.

In the second group, some portion of the audience has already bought an
espresso grinder, or decided they don't want one right now after all. But it's
also guaranteed to include thousands of people actively shopping for one right
now.

Which campaign do you think is going to result in more espresso grinders sold?
The one that doesn't include you, or the one that does?

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oneeyedpigeon
What about campaign c: show 9,900 people who recently looked at espresso
grinders an ad for one, and 100 people who actually bought one an ad for
something related that they might need. If you're harvesting that kind of data
anyway, at least use it!

As a matter of interest, is someone who has previously purchased an espresso
grinder more or less likely to buy one than someone who hasn't?

~~~
ryandvm
Of course you're correct, but the problem is Campaign C requires a far higher
invasion of privacy. Now, not only do you want the advertisers to track the
sites you visit - you're also proposing they somehow get information about
everything you purchase?! No thanks.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
It wouldn't be that hard to handle without any further privacy invasion:
online shop waits O(12) hours before reporting to AdSense, and if visitor
bought the product within that time, reports other, related product instead.

(If the ads in the first 12 hours are important, it makes little sense that
they keep advertising for a whole month.)

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chippy
Let's consider this for our non techy friends and family.

Can we expect our mothers to pay Google a monthy fee to view less adverts on
webpages on the Internet? How will their ideas about what the internet-as-
utility mean to them change? Will they consider the money they pay to their
ISP as already covering this? Would not paying imply that they should be happy
to see advertising? How would this model apply to other paid services? Should
people pay more to their taxis to be able to shut off the in cab monitors
showing ads? Should a monthly additional payment be made to their email client
to stop spam? Would they consider it okay to not get advertisements sent to
their postal mail by their utility companies if they paid some more?

Would we see a Facebook Premium account where for 10 dollars a month no ads
are shown, or a Twitter premium account where no sponsored tweets are
delivered?

Now think about this from the point of view of a company or marketeer.
Wouldn't those consumers who could afford to pay extra to not see ads be worth
more to you? Would they imply that they had more purchasing power?

~~~
ariwilson
I buy apps so I don't see ads in them all the time. This is the web equivalent
of that. Why is that complicated?

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rdancer
They should have negotiated a contract with all the ad networks that have a
name, and licensed an adblocker for the rest. They should aggressively support
the adblock detection => annoying reminder that has been slowly gaining
traction lately. "Fewer ads on million of sites" (there is ~ 1 billion sites
worldwide[1]) is not a selling point. "No more ads, ever" is.

[1] [http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-
websites/](http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/)

~~~
manigandham
That won't happen (and is one of the issues with Contributor) because of
antitrust issues. Google already has too much power in the ad ecosystem.

~~~
rdancer
For example, this could work both practically and legally:

Google could lead the industry to implement a protocol, whereby third-party
adblockers could implement a subscription service by which the user bids on
impressions the same way as advertisers do now. If the user wins, no ads are
displayed and a micropayment is deducted from their balance.

The necessity to mediate payments would provide an opportunity for adblockers
to generate per-user or per-transaction revenue, which would incentivize them
to support the system.

The added revenue would enable adblockers to devote sufficient time to
blacklist maintenance for revenue-generating customers, further strengthening
the pressure on sites that don't participate in the system, and providing
added value to participating users.

I suspect this system may not work, because the auction mechanism would be
vulnerable to manipulation by the advertisers, or because the price to the
user would not be commesurate with the perceived benefit. But it is plausible,
and would be legal.

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Harhsjen
Why do I get the impression that I'm paying protection money to the mob?

These ads wouldn't exist in the first place if it wasn't for Google.

~~~
ariwilson
Correspondingly, if there were no ads there would be many fewer small
websites.

~~~
natch
Absolutely true. Fewer, but better quality.

With money as a motivator, we have ended up with a lot of keyword-spammy poor
quality content.

~~~
mike_hearn
Why better quality?

A whole lot of the sites I spend most time with are ad supported. It's not
clear to me why less money == more quality, in your eyes.

~~~
marak830
I dont know if i agree (im on the fence), but he did mebtiob spammy click bait
titles.

There would be a hell of ablot less of those if there were no ad revenue(as
ads are loaded when you enter they authors dobt care if you read those spammy
articles, just load the damn page).

I would like to velieve this is true, but im not sure it would be(in the case
of getting well written articles without ads).

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awalton
Pay Google to stop seeing some Google ads.

Meanwhile, websites will code around this and display more ads from other
sources, and reap the rewards of getting paid by Google for not showing Google
ads.

No thanks, I'll keep using Adblock.

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arihant
It's unfortunate that all the pricing schemes are non-deterministic. If they
can't know for sure, they should just have an additional pay-as-you-go style
plan with rough estimates. Maybe let people decide how much maximum they are
willing to pay each month. It actually sounds like that until one hits the
pricing page.

It looks like as an average case, looking to spend $25 or above should get one
100% AdSense free Internet. But that option isn't there. Given how much value
a typical power user gains from Google and the content websites combined, $25
a month is a bargain.

~~~
ariwilson
You choose how much you're willing to pay per month. The non deterministic
part is what percentage of advertising will be blocked (either due to not
being on Google's ad network or because you ran out of spend in your monthly
payment).

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graeham
I think they're on the right track with a wide pay-for-content subscription,
but I think they're missing that what people don't like is being tracked, not
ads themselves.

Ads can be ignored easily enough, especially with a blocker. Why pay for a
service that you can get with an ad blocker?

What's needed is a Spotify premium-style model, where a monthly subscription
is paid by the user, which is distributed to the content producers. (Or
perhaps a tiered or capped system, where payment is tied to amount of content
consumed). Such a system would also enforce better content being produced,
with linkbait and sites designed for users to erroneously click on ads
becoming non-viable.

Single-source subscriptions (like a newspaper would be) don't make sense for
the internet. Distribution costs are negligible compared to print, and ease of
accessing content is not tied to geography.

~~~
mschuster91
> What's needed is a Spotify premium-style model, where a monthly subscription
> is paid by the user, which is distributed to the content producers.

Remember flattr? IIRC it failed because a lack of adoption and because
micropayments are expensive (fuck banks for this one).

~~~
graeham
Hadn't heard of them before to be honest. With a quick look on their Wikipedia
page, perhaps they were too early for post-Wikileaks concern around privacy?

Bank payments may be better now too, with more competition and greater use of
non-traditional currency (ie Bitcoin).

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andrewclunn
If I'm going to pay for content, I'm going to pay the creator directly, not
some middle man (here being Google) in order to reinforce their ad based
model. Sorry, no dice.

~~~
manigandham
The money is still going to the creator, the same as the ad model.

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sandworm101
Pay Google? Pay a billion-dollar company to not do something?

So, going forward, it will be in Google's interest to make ads ever more
annoying and creepy so that people are pushed into paying to end the pain.
That is not a world in which I want to live.

How about this: Google pays me for watching their annoying ads. Given that I
have the upper hand on the tech front (adblockers) and am the one buying the
products, shouldn't I be the one being paid?

~~~
dajonker
Don't forget that Google is a billion-dollar company primarily because they
sell a lot of ads. Why do you think Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, etc.
are free to use? Because they make a lot of money (from ads), so they can hire
the best developers to build awesome tools that (almost) everybody loves. They
could stop doing ads altogether and instead just ask money for using all
Google products directly, but it'd just be really expensive, and people
usually don't like to pay for stuff they think should be free.

~~~
riyadparvez
No, some people think every company on internet owe them free service. I use
ad-blockers too; but I do not whine out of entitlement. This is the reason I
hate ad related discussions - full of entitlements and whinings.

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hkmurakami
would seriously consider it if there were a "100% fewer ads" option.

~~~
cube00
I think that's to cover the cases where a site may be using other ad providers
in addition to AdSense.

~~~
sagarjauhari
But in that case, the percentage of lesser adds would be highly unreliable.

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wnevets
Googles ads usually aren't worth blocking.

~~~
colejohnson66
It's that clickbait Taboola and Outbrain crap that's annoying. If a Google ad
is clickbait, I can report it. Can't do that with those clickbait ones.

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ymse
Given that Google Ads are mostly used on third-party sites, does this mean
they will be sharing some of that revenue with the sites that now loses their
ads?

If not, why should we give Google money to take potential income from smaller
companies?

~~~
ariwilson
The sites make more money with Contributor than they would have with the ads,
due to the ad auction:

[https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/6084026?hl=en&...](https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/6084026?hl=en&ref_topic=6182555)

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kevindeasis
This seems like a good idea. Well, there are numerous people using ad blocking
software. The percentage of blocking ads is really high. So, why not have
another plan for people that uses blocking software.

Some people use blocking software that I know like blocking software so they
can block all the other terrible ads that come from other ad providers. Those
other ads are really intrusive. So, if some of the funds are going to the
contributors of a site. Why not have another plan meant for blocking higher
amount of ads.

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heavymark
Google's attempt at dealing with the increasing number of people using Ad
Blockers which as sky rocketed with the push from Apple. So they are trying
their best to curb the growth. While there will be some noble people like a
lot of us reading this, the rest of the world will simply install and
Adblocker to block all ads for free rather than pay money to block some ads.

------
joshavant
By these numbers, does this mean Google makes somewhere on the order of
$20/month/person from AdSense?

~~~
graeham
There was a few articles on value per user a few years ago, can't recall
anything recently. Probably a bit less for an average user, but someone driven
enough to opt out is probably more valuable than an average user

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/11/07/a-twitte...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/11/07/a-twitter-
user-is-worth-110-facebooks-98-linkedins-93/)

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joshmn
Can't imagine this will last long.

I don't have adblocker/ublock/etc installed because I dislike adsense or
adwords. I can ignore them just fine, but every blue moon I'll find something
worth clicking.

It's for 99.999999% of the other ads that drive me insane. Or did I completely
miss something?

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LeoPanthera
You're paying the site hosting the ad, at least indirectly. They get a portion
of your money.

If this is popular, it will probably increase ad revenue, so more sites are
likely to want to show Google ads, which means people not paying into this
scheme will see even more ads as a result.

~~~
bratsche
I don't really get how it would cause that to happen.

Right now sites are being paid by advertisers. Under this scheme they're being
paid by users. It doesn't say they're being paid more (or less), so I don't
see why this would have any effect on whether sites use ads or not.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Well, YouTube was the same way. Video creators being paid by advertisers. Then
YouTube Red came along - pay a free, see no ads, and your money goes to the
video creators.

But under YouTube Red, revenue for creators went up. I would imagine the same
thing would happen here.

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riscy
I don't see why we should pay website owners through Google, who will
presumably take a cut of the money, when decentralized digital currency
exists. I'd like to see a Bitcoin based system in the form of a browser
plugin.

~~~
ariwilson
Do you want people to click to donate every time they show up on a page?
People will never click that button.

This system is great because it's a) seamless (you just get one bill a month),
b) based on usage (you visited these pages) and c) is a market (the price you
pay is based on competitive rates that advertisers would otherwise be willing
to pay).

~~~
riscy
You can cover all of the points you made by loading a Bitcoin wallet and
having the plugin deduct fractions of a BTC when you visit these web pages,
and when the wallet is empty ads are loaded instead. The main loser in this
situation is Google, since the site creators get all of the money. Users may
have privacy concerns since BTC transactions are on a public record, but you
can keep creating new Bitcoin wallets automatically to mitigate this concern.

~~~
ariwilson
How much do you pay per visit?

~~~
riscy
A user's client should respond with an accept/reject response to the price
offered by the website. Everything else would be determined freely: Clients
can be created with price range configurations as desired (perhaps per
website, in a probabilistic way, and/or some cost-concious settings), and
website owners can analyze their visitor's accept/reject rates to determine
how much to ask for before falling back on ads.

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natch
Google is not a disinterested party here, of course. A better solution for the
non-Google stakeholders would be to do this through a neutral third party
organization where publisher lockin to an ad platform would not be an issue.

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sagarjauhari
I have often wondered - why can't there be a subscription model where Google
says: Pay us $5 a month and you will not be 'tracked'. If all I want is to not
see ads, why will I not just use an ad blocker?

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rayiner
I really want to sign up for this but I'm clicking on "Sign up Now" and it's
not working...

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mschuster91
Five clicks to see I'm not eligible. Google, I'm disappointed.

~~~
sagarjauhari
What is the eligibility criteria anyways?

~~~
mschuster91
A credit card registered in the US.

