
Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads - espadrine
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-contributor
======
austenallred
I've been a contributor member for several months now, because I firmly
believe in two things:

1\. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will
cease to exist. 2\. Life without ads is much better.

So here's what people need to know about Google contributor:

1\. I pay for the highest level available.

2\. I love not seeing ads.

3\. This only works for Google-based ads, which are certainly common, but are
neither the majority of advertising online, nor are they among the more
annoying.

4\. Contributor doesn't work like an ad blocker, which makes ads just
"disappear." Instead, you see a big empty block (that is apparently
customizable in some way) that says "Thank you for being a contributor. The ad
_space_ is still there, it's just blank. So if half of your page used to be
covered in ads, now half your page is covered in little blocks that say,
"Thank you for being a contributor."

For example, here's a screenshot of iMore (the site that was used to compare
ios9's ad blockers): [https://austen-
screenshots.s3.amazonaws.com/iMore__The_1_sit...](https://austen-
screenshots.s3.amazonaws.com/iMore__The_1_site_for_iPhone_iPad_Mac_and_all_things_Apple_cllk8.png)
I'd almost prefer ads.

5\. This doesn't stop most of your pages from taking forever to load because
of JavaScript from other ad networks.

6\. I don't care about the tracking/privacy as much as some people, but it
doesn't solve that problem either.

So, do I think this is a good idea? Absolutely. I hope Google can expand it,
and I _will_ pay. I have no idea how expensive it would be to pay for the
disappearance of all ads, but I'd likely do it. (I recognize I'm not the
"average" Internet user as far as what I'm willing to pay).

That being said, it does not yet come close to competing with the convenience
that an ad-blocker provides (which I don't use out of principle).

It's still early, so I give some leeway, and I like the idea, but as of yet
this won't be a game changer. I truly hope it can become one.

~~~
lighthawk
> or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist

I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it.

Much of the web is noise and regurgitation. The reason that publications have
started to churn out poorly thought out crap is that they have to get their
pagerank up and stay relevant. The reason they have to do that is because if
they don't do it, there are ad revenue dependent content generators out there
that will do it for them. If you get rid of the ad revenue, you reduce the
velocity of the crap engine, and then good content can again be successful on
a subscription model.

Google is great. I think in many ways they've made the world a better place.
Google is very ad revenue dependent. Ad revenue sponsored all of the great
television shows and radio shows from the beginning. I don't think that
advertising should go away because it makes great things by Google and media
companies possible.

However, I see absolutely no problem whatsoever in blocking ads on my own
without paying Google. Tivo allows ad blocking. DVRs allow ad blocking. I
shouldn't need to pay every network or affiliate just to block ads.

~~~
mahranch
> I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it.

I'm not sure how you "don't buy it". It's like not buying the fact that the
moon orbits the earth.

Granted, yes, there is poor content, spammy content, copyright theft, and
everything in between, but that doesn't mean all the original and _good_
content vanishes or gets nullified. It's not a zero sum game and it's not
black and white. People create content and then many (if not most) hope to
monetize that content somehow. The most common form of monetization is ads.
Whether it's some guy's physics blog on wordpress, or someone reporting the
death of a celebrity on TMZ, all that content relies on paid advertisements.

Without ways to monetize content, the internet simply wouldn't exist in its
current form. I don't even know how there is a discussion on this. Sites like
youtube wouldn't exist or would be incredibly tiny because what good is
hosting all that video content, paying for all that bandwidth, if you can't
show some ads and make some money? If you can't make money, you can't pay your
hosting bill. And a subscription service just wouldn't work - if youtube tried
that originally instead of ads, I doubt most of us would have even heard of
youtube in this alternate ad-free reality.

And that's my point. Ads drive the internet. Without ads, the internet would
probably still look like it did in 1996. Because without all that TMZ, fantasy
football and facebook content, the large majority of the masses wouldn't have
dove in head first. If you don't have content, you don't have users. If you
don't have users, you don't have innovation. No innovation, no current
internet.

~~~
mirimir
Many of us liked the Internet in 1996 ;) And some saw its commercialization as
an affront, as a violation of fundamental principles. So anyway, I'm not at
all attached to the Internet existing in it's current form.

------
Nursie
I find these things interesting, but not so much I won't use an adblocker.
Perhaps I can buy into this and allow google ads, and then block the resulting
'thanks' text. I don't need that either.

I find the whole thing odd though.

I never click ads when I do see them, I literally have never, ever bought
anything through advertising links. Even without an adblocker, the only reason
the site would be getting money from my view is that the advertiser is being
ripped off - I am literally a worthless view to them. In fact for any ad
that's beyond static text I am more likely to remember your brand and
deliberately _not_ buy your stuff in future.

So effectively, any site that was being supported by my visits would be
scamming the advertiser.

I'm kind of OK with that, but the other benefits of adblocking (no tracking,
no random scripts executing, much faster page-loading etc) far outweigh any
concerns.

I know, I'm accessing your content without paying at the moment. I would be
happy to put a header in my http requests that says I will not render ads, and
allow you to decide if you want to serve me. Until then, I'm going to carry on
freeloading, but make no mistake - if I wasn't, you would be.

~~~
brwnll
I'm pretty tired of one of these personalities that appear to be a loud voice
in the ad blocking conversation.

"Ad's don't work on me and I have never ever been positively influenced in any
way every by one"

This simply makes you, at best, look naive in your believe that your conscious
self is responsible for all (or even a majority) of your actions, and at
worst, wrong/lying (who remembers everything they've ever purchased and how
they came to know about it?)

~~~
Spivak
For people that dislike ads the statement, "I have never ever been positively
influenced in any way every by one" is literally a definition because if you
purchase anything because of an ad you've been made worse off.

If you were going to buy it anyway then the ad did nothing, if you weren't
then you are now worse off as you bought something you wouldn't have otherwise
-- you've been manipulated.

From this there is no such thing as a positive ad.

Also, he didn't say that ads don't work on him, they certainly do but they're
not having the desired effect which makes them worthless to the advertiser.
Sure, they get brand recognition but if you consciously make an effort to
avoid brands which advertise to you and recommend that others avoid the brand
too then you've actually cost the advertiser money, making the ad worthless.

~~~
greiskul
But what if you weren't going to buy it because you were not aware it existed?
When you see an ad for an interesting movie and decide to check it out, you go
watch it, and love it, are you really worse off? Maybe you see an ad for a new
restaurant and decide to check it out. Are you worse off? Aren't these
examples of positive ads?

~~~
RodericDay
What if you see the ad, and decide to check the movie out, and it's terrible -
a waste of your time and money? What if you see a slick ad for a restaurant,
and it turns out the restaurant spends more money on ads than on being a good
restaurant, and it is a waste of money? Are you better off?

~~~
softawre
Wow. He was saying they could be positive. Of course you can come up with a
counter-example...

~~~
RodericDay
Which is why it is ridiculous to approach the situation from a "what if..."
perspective. We should approach it from net expected benefit, else everyone
gets to pretend they are the one true purveyor of good and classy ads.

------
bkanber
This is fascinating. Business model: annoy people so much that they pay you to
stop annoying them.

Everybody's been talking about the death of display ads, and it looks like
Google's paying attention and trying to figure out how to marginalize the ad
itself, but still take money on the transaction.

Eventually, Google could probably marginalize the ad so much that there are
only a rare few display ads left online, and Google has cleverly tricked us
into keeping that industry aloft, essentially paying to keep something we hate
alive.

~~~
herojan
The ads aren't there purely to annoy people, they're there to support the
content you'd otherwise pay for. The idea of paying them instead of getting
ads is also a way to support that content.

~~~
vitd
It can also be seen as acting like the mob. "It'd be a shame if your nice
clean web page suddenly got ruined with ads. You know, we can keep that from
happening for a price." No thanks. I'll continue to block ads and not be
tracked and have my internet load faster.

~~~
fatjokes
Go for it, but you're only able to have your cake and eat it too because of
people who view ads. If I were you, I'd keep quiet and encourage others to
view ads, otherwise content creators will have to either quit or throw up
paywalls.

~~~
sqrt17
ads stopped being pay-per-impression around 2001 or so. For actual money to
flow, people need to click on ads. For the advertisers to want to spend money,
people need to not just click on the ads but also convert (aka, go to the site
and order something).

Why does this matter? If the total ad space expands, and therefore the number
of ad views increases, people will still buy about the same amount of products
they bought before, which means the total advertising revenue of all the sites
will also still be the same.

What we'd need would be an ad blocker that allows us, at regular times, to go
to a special page, get a list of all the ads, and click on some of them in a
quiet moment where they don't interfere with site content. And of course all
of these clicks would have to count as "organic" non-fraudulent clicks.

~~~
blumkvist
>ads stopped being pay-per-impression around 2001 or so.

Care to back that up with some proof. Cuz I have a pretty clear picture of ad
spending and this is not true at all.

~~~
sqrt17
A clearer way to write this would be, pay-per-impression stopped being the
default (or only) way of doing business sometime between 1999-2001. After a
brief period where ads were predominantly text-based, ad inflation brought
graphical ads and CPM back and nowadays can do CPC as well as CPM or CPA (cost
per acquisition) links:
[https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2472725?hl=en&ref_...](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2472725?hl=en&ref_topic=3119128&vid=1-635787131877473648-2975608647)

But don't let your clear picture of ad spending make you ignore the
fundamental fact: there's no basic relation between ad views and advertising
spending. More buzzfeeds mean that there will be more ads, but not more
advertising dollars, and quality/expensive sites suffer just as heavily from
the ad inflation driven by cheap content sites as they suffer from the 20-30%
of people using ad blockers.

~~~
blumkvist
Practically all of the advertising on the internet is purchased on per
impression basis. It falls into 2 categories:

1) Advertisers paying straight per mille i.e. mr. Proper, Coca-Cola, Lays,
etc. Direct outcomes are secondary to them (at best). This is the ovewhelming
majority of the display ad spend. Yes, you read that right. The majority of
the online ad spend does not care about sales on a website.

2) CPC based ads (ala adwords). Although you are charged per click, this is
primarily because it is easier to explain to you. At the end of the day, there
are back end calculations in google (the most famous one being called "quality
score"), which transform per-click to per-mille. The reason for that is as
simple as supply and demand.

This is true for all publishers who sell on CPC. They calculate how much they
make per 1000 impressions and calibrate the CPCs towards balanced equilibrium
that will extract the most money out of the ad buyers. Publishers deal with
visits and they need to know how much they make per visit.

I made my initial comment just to see where crybabies will go with their
nonsense and couch expertise. Response as expected...

~~~
noir_lord
Your entire post was informative right up the last line, You'd demonstrated
your point brilliantly then wrecked it.

------
ISL
I've been using Contributor for the last month or so:

1) One needn't turn on all third-party cookies to make it work. Enabling a
subset of

    
    
      [*.]doubleclick.com, [*.]doubleclick.net, and [*.]google.com 
    

is sufficient.

2) Contributor is the best existing solution to the third-party micropayment
problem I've yet encountered. Direct contributions to sites are surely
preferable, but not yet practical. Contributor would appear to have the
following structural shortcomings:

\- It only applies to Google's ad network. Mass adoption of Contributor would
have the knock-on effect of strengthening Google's advertising position.
Whether Google will remain a benevolent ad-network for life is uncertain.

\- It installs a third party as a middleman, when only agreed-upon social and
networking protocols are truly requisite. If Contributor were to take off, we
run the risk of paying rent to Google for web-view transactions, just as we do
with credit-card firms for financial transactions today.

That said, Contributor is a practical step forward in allowing us to
underwrite sites we like and to raise the minimum bid that advertisers must
pay to get our attention.

Thanks, Contributor team, for making this possible.

~~~
ssharp
Thanks for the rational reply. Some of the cynical and critical comments here
strike me as far too idealistic. This seems like a completely reasonable step
to take in offering websites money for ad-free content without having to
subscribe to individual content.

The privacy argument, I can easier get on board with. Why does Google need to
still track you if you're not seeing ads? Wasn't the point of ad tracking to
get you more relevant ads, help advertisers with remarketing, etc. ?

~~~
delecti
They need to track you to associate your contributor account with your
browsing.

------
xorcist
I see a couple of issues with programs like this.

First, if this were to take off it would move the industry to impression based
pricing wholesale. Reprinted content is already on of the biggest problems
today, and with this model there is obvious risk that original creators get
nothing as reprinters take everything.

Second, given that we can't have a monopoly on this business, a webmaster is
incentivized to join every Contributor-like program there is. We would end up
with every website loading hundreds of javascripts for tracking visits from
every provider there is, which would massively increase load times on the web.

Third, there are also incentives to game the system by splitting your content
over many web sites, using iframes or javascript, each making a call to every
possible provider. Similar ad fraud schemes are already a problem today and
this will only make them easier.

One easy fix would be to make a system opt-in for the end user on a site-by-
site basis. This is similar to how Flattr and Patreon works. I pay to both of
them, and will probably not join Contributor, but it will be very exciting to
see where Google is taking this.

~~~
sangnoir
To my knowledge, Contributor uses the same infrastructure and technology as
ads, but with a different payload. All 3 problems you mentioned are problems
being experienced today:

1\. Google is already able to guage 'low quality' pages, co temt farms and
pirates. This doesn't change

2\. This happenens with ads, Google can add a rule saying you "can't have x
amount of ads of you want to be on our network "

3.Likely to stay the same: I don't see how contributor makes fraud easier

~~~
xorcist
Absolutely, those are problem we know exist and this model risks making worse.
The basic arguments is the big move towards cost by impressions if this
catches on and becomes a dominant model, and the fact that banners of limited
visibility is easier to stack. Huge white, or even invisible, banners
littering the page will not disturb the casual user.

Google lost the fight on content farms several years ago. You are more likely
to find reprints than original material if you google a breaking story or meme
for example, even if there are exceptions.

------
hartator
Has someone tried out to give his own view?

It feels it doesn't address the other reasons people use ad blocking:

\- Fewer HTTP requests (Still have to do all the ad network requests)

\- Less tracking

\- Less CPU/RAM usage (Even if there is no render of ads, still have to
process the JS from ad networks)

~~~
emergentcypher
This is why I won't be using this.

I don't want ten different ad network javascripts being loaded and running on
every single page, along with whatever assets they want to load up and all the
tracking they do across websites.

And tracking is a huge one. This is no longer just a question of whether I'm
supporting the site I visit. Whatever your site has to offer is __not __worth
the all-encompassing tracking that the networks are doing. If it is, you 'll
have a subscription fee I can pay and your service will be valuable enough
that I'll pay it.

------
devit
The biggest problem of this is that it only works on Google's ads, but there
are far more obnoxious ads that will result in the user wanting and installing
an adblocker anyway, and then why bother with Contributor?

~~~
johnward
Most users tend to complain about flying, pop ups, auto playing audio/video.
Google does none of that. So is there a real benefit here?

~~~
malchow
Some would say that there are a number of auto-playing audio and app store
redirect ads on Doubleclick AdExchange.

~~~
wlesieutre
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#/media/File:Weasel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#/media/File:Weasel_words.svg)

Either they do or they don't. A quick google didn't turn anything up, but does
someone have a reputable source?

~~~
malchow
I was trying to be polite, not weasly.

[https://blog.malwarebytes.org/malvertising-2/2014/09/googles...](https://blog.malwarebytes.org/malvertising-2/2014/09/googles-
doubleclick-ad-network-abused-once-again-in-malvertising-attacks/)

[http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/247982/google-...](http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/247982/google-
doubleclick-network-hit-with-more-malvertis.html)

[http://www.csoonline.com/article/2924309/malware-
cybercrime/...](http://www.csoonline.com/article/2924309/malware-
cybercrime/advertisers-need-to-start-monitoring-ad-security.html)

[http://readwrite.com/2014/05/15/app-redirects-mobile-spam-
ad...](http://readwrite.com/2014/05/15/app-redirects-mobile-spam-ads)

~~~
wlesieutre
Ah sorry, I misread your tone then.

As far as I'm concerned, no need to be polite with Doubleclick. If they're
serving malware, they can fuck right off.

------
minimaxir
In terms of generating-revenue-without-running-ads, I do think Patreon is
still a better option, as it both provides a _consistent_ , nonseasonal
revenue source for the author and content guarantees for the user; a win-win
in both cases.

Google Contributor is more of a charitable option which might be too subtle.

~~~
DiabloD3
I agree, Patreon is a much saner model that content creators I actually care
about are using.

------
jowiar
"Make 25% of your ads go away" feels a whole lot like the "cable TV will have
less ads" promise of old. We all know how that turned out.

The outcome of this is going to be "publishers run extra ads, you pay to make
the extra ads go away".

~~~
wnevets
wasn't the promise of cable no ads rather than less?

~~~
damontal
yep. satellite radio too.

------
arihant
How is this not April?

The problem with this approach is this -- you're still bidding on the ad spot.
While this is cool, here are ignored issues:

1\. It removes Google ads, which are arguably the least annoying ads.

2\. Since it is still ad-spot based revenues, it gives a publisher no real
business model switch to stop using ads in the long run. It is pretty agnostic
that way, publisher does not care who bid on the ad spot.

3\. No way for publisher to go ad-free.

4\. Still got all the nasty ad networks, other benefits of ad-blocking like
tracking, speed are not gained.

I think this is cool to remove Google's ads, but I would yearn the day where
there is a Spotify-like way of opting out of ads altogether for millions of
websites. I mean this from publisher side of things. Someone should give them
an option to get paid for hits without putting up ads.

But then again, I don't mind ads that much.

------
Klathmon
The best part about this is that you have really fine grained control over
where your money goes.

Don't like it going to a specific site? You can disable just that site in the
settings.

Want to replace ads with an image of something random? You can do that as
well!

Want to only have contributor run on a few hand-picked sites? Can do that too!

A friend of mine has it setup so that it's whitelist only where he disables
his adblock just for those sites, and allows contributor to work only on them.

It's actually a really nice and well thought out system.

~~~
rapind
This is exactly what I was considering. Basically only paying for the content
that I think has value by disabling uBlock or w/e for those sites.

It would be nice if I wasn't also being tracked though since I'm paying for
the content myself.

------
lotsoflumens
There's another way ... it may sound a bit crazy at first, but I think it's
the only approach that will work.

 __* Advertisers must start paying visitors to view their ads __*

Not just for clicking on ads, but simply for loading them into your browser
and looking at them or listening to them.

I read somewhere yesterday that the ad business is $40 billion/year. None of
that money goes to the people who are being abused daily by the onslaught of
mental pollution that this "industry" produces.

What should be troubling to all advertisers, is that almost all of this stuff
is displayed to people who will never buy their products.

Luckily, we have the mechanisms now to efficiently do this: Bitcoin etc. I
foresee a payment system, probably mostly run by Google since they are the
most connected to the current system, to mediate between ad-viewers and ad-
producers.

There's the problem of detecting bots vs. people, but that already exists.

This system would also be good for website owners (content creators). A
website owner would benefit by providing a reason for people to visit, thereby
also gaining a percentage of the ad revenue. People visiting a website would
be, in a sense, qualified-buyers of the products that could be advertised
there, resulting in more targeted ads, perhaps by using the bitcoin addresses
and the associated browsing history (something that's also already tracked but
without consent).

I think it's the only way out of this mess. I don't have all the details
worked out, I'm sure someone out there knows how to make it work.

~~~
mahranch
> None of that money goes to the people who are being abused daily by the
> onslaught of mental pollution that this "industry" produces.

Why should it? They're the ones consuming the free content. They get to view
whatever content they're looking at, for free. You watch a funny cat video on
youtube, that's your "reward". That's the product you're buying with your
time.

I don't know why people feel so entitled to free stuff. They forget that the
content they're viewing is _subsidized_ by ads. It's only free _because_ of
ads.

Here's a question; Would you sit through a 60 second commercial to watch a
completely brand new episode of Game of Thrones that no one has seen yet? If
not, then switch Game of Thrones to whatever your favorite TV show is. Is the
answer now yes? Ok, good. Now why should the advertiser _also_ pay you to view
the ad? Your "payment" is getting to watch game of thrones. The people who
created game of thrones should the one's getting paid by the advertiser, not
you.

Now I know not all content is "good" and worth your time viewing ads, but
that's a matter of subjectivity and not really worth discussing. Everyone has
different tastes when it comes to content. What matters is the fact that
content is subsidized ads. For whatever reason, this is an extremely hard
concept for many people to grasp. As a content creator myself, it's extremely
frustrating.

~~~
lotsoflumens
I understand your frustration! Everyone wants to believe that what they create
has value and that people should pay something to enjoy it.

But we can't escape the reality that the world is being changed dramatically
by technology and that the concept of "cost gravity" is unstoppable. Pieter
Hintjens has a very good essay on this at
[http://cultureandempire.com](http://cultureandempire.com)

This is what we're seeing with adblocking - the technology to control which
information is allowed to enter our brains is now available to everyone. Your
brain is your most valuable organ, and it is highly susceptible to persuasion
and influence through positive and negative images, greed, fear and jealousy.
All of these can be, and are, manipulated by advertisers for their benefit.

It has always been an arms race. In the "good old days", when everyone watched
TV in the evening with their family, advertising was probably necessary to
support the content. Then after a few years the ads got louder (the volume was
actually increased) so that people would pay attention during the commercial
breaks. People discovered that their remote controls had a mute button, and
then they had some welcome silence between movie episodes. Commercial breaks
started to get longer and people discovered that they could record everything
and fast-forward through the commercial breaks, saving much valuable time. A
president of the MPAA (Jack Valenti I think) actually said that it should be
illegal to skip through the advertising when viewing time-shifted video
because that deprived the broadcaster of the revenue to which they were
entitled.

Even movie theaters, where the assumption was that you could watch the movie
since you paid for admission, started to show advertising at the beginning. At
first it was just a couple of quick minutes before the feature, but that soon
became many more minutes and now is at about 30 minutes (advertising thinly
disguised as games and quizzes).

My simple proposal is that this downward spiral can be stopped, if advertisers
accept that people want to control what they see and hear in an increasingly
noisy world, and that this is both legitimate and necessary.

Regarding your question about why an advertiser should also pay me to watch an
ad in addition to a Game of Thrones episode: Because, if they paid me, I would
listen to their pitch. That's much more valuable than blindly displaying ads
with the hope that 0.1% or less of the ad recipients would pay any attention.

------
xbryanx
For the ~price of Netflix subscription, I only get 25-50% fewer ads? Nah...too
expensive.

~~~
onion2k
If it was any cheaper then people would believe ads have very little value
which leads to thinking an ad-blocker isn't really harming anyone. I wouldn't
be surprised if this product is really, at least in part, a PR move to get
people to think seeing adverts is the equivalent of 'saving' $20/month for web
content.

~~~
bargl
Which is interesting because of how many people mention that adds really only
contribute a small fraction of that. From what I can find $1 per 1000
impressions seems to be about average for ad revenue.

That means that if I go to 1000 websites in a month I'd expect to pay about
$1. I'd be interested to see how many impressions I make per month and find
out how much money I actually generate for these websites.

I'd also be interested in a focused ad session to reduce the cost of my
browsing. I.E. you show me products and I actually click on them to check them
out, and you add money to my pool for browsing. It would have to be an opt-in
scenario, but that would be an alternative to paying and seeing ads while you
browse.

~~~
sago
If there are 6 ads on a page, do you visit 5 pages on average a day? I don't
think that is many. These things multiply quickly.

~~~
bargl
Ha good point. I'm going to circle back to the comment above mine though. I'm
going to change his $20 to $15 because that is the highest amount listed on
their site.

I'm also going to factor in that this only removes at most 50% of the ads. we
are talking about vising something like 166 (15000/30/6 *2(for the 50%)) pages
on an average day. And those are pages with google ads only.

So do I visit 166 pages with 6 google ads on it a day? I don't honestly know
but I doubt it.

Now if I could pay $15 a month to remove ALL ads, I think that would be worth
my money, even though I still doubt that I visit 166 pages a day.

------
michaelt

      Q: Isn’t there a waitlist to join? Or I need an invite
      or something?
      A: Not anymore! You can sign up immediately and support
      tons of websites with one monthly payment.
    

Unfortunately, I still get this:

Join the waitlist

Contributor is not yet available in your country.

:(

~~~
pixelcort
I'm seeing this too, from Japan.

------
ksk
> This is cool for several reasons:

4\. Google gets paid, rather than all the money going to the actual website.

~~~
skj
This is just you buying the ad slot instead of the advertiser. Why should it
be any different for the website's income?

If anything, more entities bidding for the ad means the prices can go higher
and the website gets more money (though I imagine any difference here would be
undetectable).

~~~
ksk
> Why should it be any different for the website's income?

Because the point is that a lot of people who block ads, don't actually like
advertising. I would hazard a guess that they want to support websites, but
they don't want to support advertising companies, and validate their business.

------
mhkool
When I visited Yahoo the other day and looked at the very long list of URLs
necessary to track me and to display ads, I knew that the same system without
this feature would be a lot cheaper and a lot faster (read: less servers are
required).

The next thought was that a paid service with a low fee for Yahoo news, email
etc. can be profitable and have happy users.

------
manigandham
To offer some perspective on the advertiser side:

1) Content costs money. Only way to pay is directly or indirectly (via ads).
Ads are the only micropayment system that works at scale so far because it has
no overhead of decisions or funds transfer and is monetarily "free". It's also
more anonymous than direct payments.

2) Ads do work. Very well. Billions of dollars, millions of work-hours and
petabytes of data prove this daily.

3) Ads aren't going anywhere and the industry will not disappear. It's bigger
and stronger than ever with billions of clicks, pageviews, video views,
tweets, likes, posts, snapchats, etc being sent every day. The technology for
delivering ads will change along with more embedded/sponsored content but this
model will always be valid.

4) What we're seeing is a reset in the industry to finally care more about the
user experience (because they have more control now). Best case scenario - we
have better ads, revenue and consumer experiences. Worse case - we're right
back where we started or even a whole lot worse with more data tracking.
Either scenarios are equally possible.

------
chmullig
I love the concept of this. Essentially it's just letting you enter the ad
auction for yourself, with a monthly spending cap (I imagine it's a little
trickier under the hood, but maybe not _that_ much trickier).

I signed up yesterday after a friend mentioned it, and it's near. It's
definitely a minority of ads, but it's still nicer to see cat pics than other
shit.

------
supercanuck
This is great, now wealthy tech/content moral apologists can pay for the
content they want while the rest of us can get on with our lives about using
ad-blockers.

Most of those properties, New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, Business
Insider are currently making a profit, so why is there this moral outrage that
they are not getting paid? These businesses are not charities, they are not
owed your money when they choose to display free content with easily blocked
ads, they are businesses.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
You really think they'll continue to make money when inevitably adblocker
software on any browser becomes as ubiquitous as messenger or camera software
on a phone? That's the whole issue. The current ad model isn't really
sustainable in that light. There's no outrage they're not getting paid, there
is concern that extrapolating current trends, they won't get paid a few years
down the line and will either shut down or enforce changes that radically
change the internet for the worse.

You can either get a closed market where every piece of content is paid for
like Netflix and you start to see all kinds of lock-in effects that drive
monopolies (if I switch from this vendor to a slightly better one I can't
transfer my music/files/videos/articles etc, so I'd rather stay with what I
have), as well as putting a price floor on information that used to be free
with inconvenience for potentially hundreds of millions who can't afford the
digital subscription, which radically changes the internet. Or you can get a
different compensation model for content, like paying not to see ads without
having to subscribe to a particular business's content, or buy their content
pieces on their platform. This is what that is.

Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off
fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think
pretty naive.

~~~
mahranch
> Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off
> fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I
> think pretty naive.

A third option that I think is the most likely (because it's already begun to
happen): Programs & plugins for websites that serve ads up natively from the
local website. This means there's no call to a third party. It means there
would be nothing to block and the ad gets through.

If the ad is a simple image or gif file, an ad blocker would have no way to
tell what it is. It wouldn't know if it's a picture of a cat with a piece of
bread on its head or an ad for denture cream. This is because the picture is
coming from the website you're visiting and could have a name like cute-
cat.jpg. It basically nullifies the host file for ad blockers.

That's what I think is going to happen. All the big ad companies (cough,
google) need to do is revamp their ad network slightly and ad blockers become
significantly less useful overnight.

I'm not saying it would make ad blockers 100% obsolete, far from it. They'd
still be useful. But a lot, and I mean _a lot_ more ads would get through that
wouldn't have before. If even 40% more get through, that's still a huge
number.

~~~
jdiez17
You're saying that there's going to be an arms race between advertisers and ad
blockers and you assume advertisers are going to win by fuzzing the definition
of "ad". Is that a good thing? It sounds like a local maximum to me, like
native advertising, and not really a step in the right direction.

In The Ideal World ad blockers wouldn't exist because we'd all be happy paying
our fair share to content creators. This seems pretty far off from the current
status quo, but running an ad blocker today is only adding fuel to the fire.
If advertisers step up their game and ads become unblockable, we might be
closing the door to a better solution and be stuck with ads forever.

~~~
mahranch
> Is that a good thing?

A very good thing, actually. For starters, nobody minds ads. They subsidize
content. Without ads, the internet wouldn't exist in its current iteration.

What people are against are malicious ads and the like. If an ad is a simple
gif or jpg (picture), there can be no maliciousness. It makes ads relatively
safe again. And content creators actually make money, incentivizing better and
more content. Everyone wins.

------
neprune
This is a temporary fix. Despite the few conscientious objectors, ad-blockers
will be ubiquitous. My best guess:

Big-name websites will show more native adds. Companies will be desperate
after losing digital adds, especially with the move to on-demand TV - they'll
look to spend more on these.

Other sites will look to survive by direct payment. We'll see more (and
possibly higher) paywalls. Donations will become necessary for those who can't
get away with paywalls. It will be harder to keep a small operation self-
sufficient.

Basically, adds will either still be there (just less obvious) or you'll be
paying the difference. This will come at the expense of many small sites.

------
Gravityloss
What a backwards way to become the middle man in almost all internet
monetization.

~~~
andrewstuart2
Become? I'm pretty sure they already hold that title, or close to it, via
adwords.

------
izacus
"Contributor is not available in your country."

Well, I guess my Euros aren't good enough for content creators. Unfortunately
for them, my privacy is not a currency I will use to pay for content.

~~~
doctorshady
You have to be logged into a Google account to use Contributor anyway.

------
trothamel
So with this system, the same amount of space is still taken up by ads? I
don't think that's really a huge improvement.

I think my ideal system would be something where a website can offer a
bitcoin* address in a header, and at the end of the month my browser randomly
picks a set of addresses it's seen, and sends money to them. (In conjunction
with current ad-blocking technology.)

* Bitcoin probably wouldn't work due to transaction limits, but maybe some sort of sidechain, alternative coin, or something similar.

~~~
exelius
> I think my ideal system would be something where a website can offer a
> bitcoin* address in a header, and at the end of the month my browser
> randomly picks a set of addresses it's seen, and sends money to them. (In
> conjunction with current ad-blocking technology.)

This is so ripe for abuse it's not even funny. It would take clickjacking to a
whole new level.

This is the whole problem with microtransactions: sites need them to be
frictionless or else users will abandon the flow no matter how low the price
is, but financial transactions need some sort of user confirmation or else
they're wide open to abuse.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _This is the whole problem with microtransactions: sites need them to be
> frictionless or else users will abandon the flow no matter how low the price
> is, but financial transactions need some sort of user confirmation or else
> they 're wide open to abuse._

I agree. I solved this problem with a 3-party protocol (user, provider,
authenticator) that can't be subverted by either the user or the provider.

No user intervention is required; it works seamlessly. User identity is not
revealed and the provider cannot piggyback on the shared tokens to create a
persistent identifier. The same scheme can be used to provide effortless
passage through paywalls, as well as enabling the same model as Contributor
(and before them Kachingle, Contenture, Readability and several others who've
failed).

~~~
exelius
As the authenticator would essentially need to maintain a list of verified
providers, you would have to do a lot of work to figure out which providers
are legit and which are fraudulent. Even distributed across a whole bunch of
transactions, the cost is likely too high when each transaction is a fraction
of a cent. That's just a show-stopper for microtransactions.

The technology is the easy part for microtransactions. Simplifying the
business rules to the point it can cheap enough to operate financial
transactions safely is the hard part.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _As the authenticator would essentially need to maintain a list of verified
> providers, you would have to do a lot of work to figure out which providers
> are legit and which are fraudulent._

If payment is proportional to usage, then a linkbait/clickbait scheme won't
work. The point is to reward genuine repeat visits to a site you like.

If the profit is too low, fraudsters simply go elsewhere.

------
habosa
I love Contributor, but I'll just leave this here: [http://www.smbc-
comics.com/?id=2490](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2490)

------
luxpir
I don't use an adblocker, I use a script blocker. It's not about the ads. It's
about being re-marketed, tracked, herded, bought and sold by every scummy
marketing department in some of the vilest organisations of people the Earth
has ever seen.

Yes. I want Dave and Leela, bloggers of great human interest, or my favourite
journos and comic strip artists to all get paid handsomely for their
contributions to mankind. But I don't want a third party sat in the middle of
that transaction. Particularly not _that_ one.

Work needs doing on both sides of the deal. More donation culture, easier
methods, and more motivation to write content that contributes something new
for the good of society, however that may be, for the commons. Less rehashed
tripe split ten ways, more genuinely deeply considered works that can be
easily rewarded. That's what the script blocking movement is really about.

Final word, I'm sick of this pervasive attitude that people think they're
doing the creator a favour if they pay them. I'm paying you, you get _my_
endorsement, do you have any idea how special that makes you, makes us? We're
friends now and everything! Get real. It's ego-mania of the highest form.
There are no strings attached to any purchase and the seller owes you nothing
beyond what you agreed to buy. Support them without any expectation of even
the slightest of ego kickbacks and you'll have your integrity. This
Contributor service has an issue with a lack of integrity at its very core.
Perverted altruism. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

------
weinzierl
If I can do this anonymously I'm sold. I think there is a considerable overlap
between the target group for this feature and the group of privacy aware
people.

Let us create anonymous profiles, give us the possibility to pay via prepaid
card and you will be our hero again, Google.

------
monochromatic
I like that people are thinking in this direction, and I would in principle be
happy to pay a smallish monthly fee instead of just using an ad blocker. But
this system doesn't really solve the issues I have with ads.

------
amalcon
Google Contributor is a fantastic idea, and it's (almost) exactly the sort of
thing I'd want for a content-provider-supporting endgame.

Unfortunately, its a non-starter because it requires browsing while logged
into a Google account. I refuse to do that. Not that I believe this will
actually prevent Google from tracking me, but because I don't want to make it
any easier than it already is.

------
roymurdock
I don't understand why people are trying to soften the blow for content-
providers who generate revenue through intrusive, annoying, and privacy-
invading ads.

Why are you defending people who clearly do not respect you?

Why are you paying a tax ($15/mo for Google Contributor) to make it so that
these people can continue to operate on a broken business model?

Why are you so scared of the internet changing? It's nonsensical.

------
AJ007
Google already pays to remove adblockers.
[http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/03/amazon-google-
microsoft-a...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/03/amazon-google-microsoft-
adblock-plus/)

On the other hand, looks like a nice social engineering experiment in figuring
out how to convince users to be tracked better.

------
robbrown451
I think it is a great idea. I probably won't use it, I tend to just tolerate
ads and don't mind them if they aren't obnoxious. I get a lot of Amazon ads,
and they typically show things that I am very much in the market for, since
they know what I've bought and looked at. I don't mind that kind of ad.

What's needed is for ad blockers to have a setting that lets these Contributor
"ads" through and blocks the rest, with the setting preferably on by default.
My opinion is that use of an ad blocker, while refusing to pay for something
like this (especially if it is priced such that Google and the web site make
the same amount of money as if you saw the ads), is not ethical, as you are
being a freeloader.

All the arguments made by those defending ad blockers tend to fall away when
something like this is available. If you don't like ads, and don't want to pay
directly, you probably shouldn't be consuming the content.

------
sago
The problem with this scheme is that it still involves trusting the ad
platform, the advertisers (some still show), and the ad strategy of the
website. Trusting them to not serve anything nasty, trusting them to account
for our money correctly, trusting them to show moderation in the number of ad
'slots' they try to fill.

Ad blockers remove that trust. The industry has shown they are untrustworthy,
overall (i.e. there are some that are trustworthy, but you have no way of
identifying if a particular site will have only them showing, or even if it
will be the same next time you visit).

I adblock. I also back a range of Patreons, and regularly support some other
sites. For example, I support BoardGameGeek. I'd support more content creators
if that were a possibility. But I'm not going to do it via the proxy of the
advertising platforms.

------
mrbig4545
or, here's a crazy idea, I keep adblocking, and keep my money?

I adblock not to block ads, but for privacy. I don't like being tracked, and
using contributor won't fix that

------
chetanahuja
Does this sound like a good old fashioned "pay for protection" type business
model to anyone else?

~~~
bandicity
No the emperor's clothes are fantastic!

------
tempVariable
It is just short of mafia protection money.

The concept that as a user, I don't know the ultimate bribe cost. Plus
constant worry that it may go up or worse, the rules have changed and prices(
read bribes ) went up. What a backwards way of shimmying your way into what
should be : consumer + producer relationship.

I want to live in a reality where I know your costs and you tell me how much
divided amongst your users is my share to pay. Let's get Google out of the
equation.

What if we had mandatory HTTP headers: "Content-Cost: 0.02" and my browser had
a credit card linked against it and I will decide if your content is good
enough to buy.

Ads are evil. The industry is evil. And I don't mean it in a bible-churchy-
preachy way. These are not people I will ever support with my coin.

------
skue
This still gives Google the ability to track the web pages we visit, and many
of us block ads because of tracking, not because they're ugly.

That said, I do think that solutions like Google Contributor are the way
forward if it can become an open standard that supports anonymization. I'm
willing to trust my browser and a local, open-source wallet to watch the sites
that I visit and authorize micro-payments via an anonymous currency. Those
payments could be delivered to websites via middlemen that include ad vendors
like Google or other processors.

It would require careful design and numerous security considerations, but it
seems possible to use this model to support publishers while maintaining
privacy.

------
pmlnr
umm, [https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/), anyone?

------
MilesTeg
I would pay $2 to $10 per month to remove all adds from youtube. I would not
bother with this.

------
downandout
The reality is that few people will do this as long as it's optional. The
masses are short-sighted. For anything like this to work, a publisher needs to
block the display of their content if ad-blocking is in place. They could
bring up something that says "you have one of two choices: go to <Google
contributor-like network> and pay, or disable your adblocker". If people run
into this enough, they'll do one or the other.

~~~
dwb
Actually you just need to hold down the refresh button to be able to reload
with content blockers temporarily disabled.

------
tehwebguy
I'm one of those who don't really care about advertising but doesn't want to
be tracked everywhere, so this is sort of the worst of both worlds for me.

------
omginternets
At the end of the day, people don't seem to care about whether content-
creators get paid. And why should they? There's an almost inexhaustible source
of "content" (whatever that means) and for every creator that steps down,
another will step in.

I will continue to use an ad blocker and _not_ pay Google, thank you very
much.

If you want me to consume ads, make ads I want to consume.

------
njsubedi
I have always thought, the extra packets received by ads add up to my internet
bills. Now I can serve a blank page and save some data. ;)

------
adanto6840
Does this work on YouTube ads? If so, I'd pony up in a heartbeat...

~~~
corywright
Same here. I'd happily pay a monthly subscription to stop seeing ads in the
YouTube iPad app.

------
aylons
I don't like the current proposition: you pay for seeing less ads, but there's
no tier guaranteeing no ads. Even if they guarantee 99% less ads, I still
wouldn't sign for it.

Paying for seeing less ads does not change the incentives for tracking and
targeting, and may even worsen them: surely Google will start by cutting the
less targeted ads and will keep the most targeted ones. The more I cut the
ads, the more targeted the remaining ads will be, and stronger will be their
incentive to track and analyze my behavior.

Only by a policy of no ads and no other revenue stream besides my money would
avoid some of these perverse incentives.

Of course, Google Contributor would still have to track the sites I visit, so
I wouldn't be able to prevent tracking with a technical tool if I signed for
it. This adds even more to the argument that Contributor is only an option if
no ads are allowed, so that he incentives for targeting and analysis are now
removed.

------
Aldo_MX
The only time I clicked on an ad, it was an ad about a product in Amazon I
previously intended to purchase but it didn't have stock.

My reaction was a "wow, does it have stock now??? let me hurry!!! what? no
stock? why do you advertise a product without stock???"

After that moment, the ad kept following me during several days...

------
tefo-mohapi
The issue with digital media vs print is that people are already paying for
connectivity to the internet making them less likely to want to pay for access
to content. We've seen it with music and video and will continue seeing it
with text / news content.

------
DLarsen
Has anyone arrived at an estimate that puts the cost in terms of CPM?

I know that at least in terms of what makes it out to RTB across most of the
exchanges, a person like me will account for about 1000 bid requests in a
month. Even if we pad that significantly, there's a good chance I'd be paying
paying a pretty rich CPM rate.

Given that folks who would likely sign up for this are probably not heavy
clickers, my strong hunch is that Google is raking in a pretty fat margin. If
an advertiser really wants you, they pay up and you see the ad. In other
words, you're probably competing with advertisers to drive up the price of the
impression.

------
unabridged
This will probably only block the ads that don't bother me, text and banners.
The part I hate is the javascript bloat that loads from 1000 domains, the
fullscreen popup that asks me to subscribe, and the autoplaying videos.

------
coldpie
This seems neat, but can I still use noscript and my ad blocker? I feel like
the ads need to be display-able for their backend to know I'm visiting a page.
But I use noscript and ublock, so it would fail to pay out.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
My experiments so far (with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Exploding Cookies,
and Random User Agent all on) suggest no. It seems like you'd have to do some
extra work to whitelist sites so that they could get paid. It isn't clear what
GOOG will do with my $2 if they can't attribute my visits...

------
gglitch
If a single tracker gets through, it's missing the point, at least for me.

------
lucideer
While I do find ads very mildly annoying, I don't tend to visit too many sites
that have very intrusive advertising. My primary reason for using an adblocker
(I don't use an adblocker actually, I use uBlock which is more general) is to
reduce tracking and increase privacy.

I would previously have assumed that this was the same motivation most
technically proficient adblocker users, but the comments here on HN seem to
bely that assumption completely.

Are people really that bothered by ads that they would pay Google to continue
to track their every move on the web silently???

~~~
LesZedCB
Getting away from tracking is primarily why I use it. I also tend to be
surprised by people thinking ad blocking is about blocking ads as well,
though. Especially here, maybe it's just a cultural shift towards generally
being ok with being tracked. Oh, I hope not, though...

------
Steko
Propping up the existing system with money doesn't sound like a solution. If
there's a fox in the henhouse, leaving a bowl of fox chow next to the chickens
isn't going to fix the problem.

------
JustSomeNobody
I don't always want to be logged into Google.

Edit: Can't shake the thought that this is the mafia offering protection from
the bad guys.

I know, I know, this isn't reddit. But it's just an odd thought that I had.

------
anarazel
And at the same time I make it even easier for google to build a high quality
profile of my activities. I'm a bit paranoid, but that bothers me more than
actually seeing the ads.

------
sergiotapia
Why pay for this is uBlock Origin is free? I never asked for ads, and websites
never asked to charge me. I'm not going to pay tons of cash to see -25% ads.
Not gonna happen.

------
zxlk21e
the interesting part is that he says you basically bid on the placement
yourself. Lots of publishers are paid via CPC, so only when clicks are made.
I'm guessing this has to be CPM bid then, in which case to be effective you're
going to burn through you $2 per month awfully fast.

Another thing - if you're actually taking part in the bidding process this is
a trojan horse to jack up the bid prices (they work in an auction format
roughly) for everyone else.

Well played, evil Google.

------
philliphaydon
I don't think anyone is contesting the fact that ads are needed to pay content
creators.

The problem is, if you go to Engadget with ghostery, leave it disabled. It
shows 27 additional items loaded in the page. For WHAT?

That's insane. Even imgur has too many external resources for ads and
tracking.

If ads were not blocking, intrusive, and there wasn't so many of them and not
so much tracking. People probably wouldn't care about ads. But websites like
Engadget have ruined it for everyone.

------
pnathan
Hey! This is kind of cool! I didn't know about this. It's like micropayments-
in-a-box. I think I might do this (but have to think about the system).

However, I do have one thought. Google ads initially were incredibly popular
because they weren't in your face asking for the monkey to be punched. Which
is _still pretty much the case_.

The worst ads aren't being served by Google, they're being served by Tabooleh
and the other bad-content farms.

------
neves
Great, finally micropayments [http://www.useit.com/articles/the-case-for-
micropayments/](http://www.useit.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/)
will work? If Google wants to display its good intentions, they would take a
lower percentage when the user bought the ads. The same price paid by an user
would top the advertiser.

------
anonyfox
Still relevant: [http://blog.plague-dev.de/posts/Adblock-isnt-
immoral](http://blog.plague-dev.de/posts/Adblock-isnt-immoral) .

I still don't get why anyone who puts an html file on a webserver is entitled
to earn any money from this. Maybe the constant manipulation from all over the
media has something to to with it.

------
solomatov
IMO, the big problem is that you don't choose who to pay. I don't want to pay
to producers of low quality contents and the ones who spammed the google with
useless pages which are at the top of the search results for SEO reasons.

IMO, micro-transactions which are used to pay by views are much better option,
and google is the company who can implement this.

------
rtpg
Does $10 really cover the amount sites would be getting if you were looking at
ads? I pay more just for NYT (and there's still ads! though not too many)

I wonder how willing people would be to pay (for example) $100 a month for
this. Chances are that's more representative of the ad revenue you're
generating if you're a heavy reader.

------
jarfil
Sounds like a great business model:

1\. Get a lot of web pages to show your ads

2\. Charge advertisers for showing their ads

3\. Charge users for not seeing ads

4\. Let the bidding wars begin!

------
shurcooL
Just to clarify, none of the support/money will go to websites that simply
don't have ads, right?

------
untog
This is cool, but would it work on my Android browser (which is my main point
of contention with ads)?

~~~
delinka
It works anywhere a Google ad works.

~~~
untog
But how does it know that I'm me? My Google login? I don't think I'm logged in
to Google everywhere. Just curious as to how this thing works, basically.

~~~
mrweasel
More importantly to me: I don't want to login to a Google account. $10 - $15
is a fair price, but I don't want to login.

I feel that if I pay for something and it now requires me to have an account
I'm getting a worse experience. This is especially true in this case where a
free product like uBlock will yield a better result.

------
Cub3
My process:

1\. Read article, sounds like a good idea, maybe I can throw $10 in a month +
white-list Google ads in my ad blocker 2\. Go to Contributor website, read
through all information aaannnddd "Contributor is not yet available in your
country." 3\. Close tabs and move on

------
ocean3
If people are bothered by ads why not stop visiting those sites? I am not
interested to pay to stop ads. As an Indian its pricer to me as well. I don't
mind ads if it allows the content creator to publish more. But i do stop
visiting sites with craps ads.

------
dools
I'd love to but " Contributor is not yet available in your country. "
(Australia)

------
eordano
I'd like to see more products/interaction/experiments in the way ChangeTip is
going:

[https://www.changetip.com/](https://www.changetip.com/)

It feels way more human than a big corporation's effort, and way more direct.

------
maerF0x0
Its unclear to me if you're paying the current rate for the ad space to google
or to the amount the creator would get. Eg: Are you buying 1 impression at
google's price, or paying the amount the website owner would receive for 1
impression?

------
arohner
I'd love it if there was a way to run Contributor while still blocking
doubleclick. I'll happily pay, but I'm not turning off adblock, and if I'm
paying, I want that page space occupied by the article, not cat pictures.

------
analog31
Once everybody is paying to avoid looking at ads, what will be the point of
advertising?

~~~
wang_li
Once everybody is paying, they'll start slipping ads back in.

------
PhilipA
Am I the only one who sees this as a defence, and a try to tackle that Apple
is promoting an ad free web?

If Google could get a % of the cut, it could help with lost revenue from the
many ad blockers.

------
johnward
With the recent ad blocker threads I wanted to see how many of my users
actually use an adblocker. I have a technical tutorials site that is not that
active anymore. I estimate that tech sites will likely have a higher
percentage of adblock users. I track this using a Google Analytics custom
variable and the blockadblock script (a fork of fuckadblock with a less
offensive name).

So far I detect that 15-20% of my users have an adblocker enabled. This
probably misses some percentage of people since it uses GA and JS. Users with
ghostery or JS disabled won't be detected but it's close enough for me. The
numbers are not quite as high as I expected them to be.

------
Kiro
Can I do this without hiding the ads? I really like the concept of supporting
the sites I visit directly and automatically but I prefer to see all ads.

------
TheQwerty
I've been trialing Contributor for the past month and there's two reasons I'm
going to continue...

1\. It works anywhere I can log into Google, which means I see less ads on my
mobile device or in browsers where I might not have been able to install an ad
blocking extension.

2\. You can configure what you see in place of most ads. Thus my browsing now
has more cats: [http://imgur.com/fqF0YJb](http://imgur.com/fqF0YJb)

The only reason I'm thinking about ditching Contributor at this point is
because I'm more of a dog lover.

------
flixic
US only.

------
Kenji
I'd rather pay my favourite artists directly by means of donation or buying
their stuff. Why would I need google for that?

------
shinamee
So to put this simple, I have to pay for what I don't even want in the first
place?

All these making money companies, pay this pay that

------
davmar
Imagine if ClearChannel offered a way for you to avoid seeing billboards as
you drive for a monthly subscription price...

------
mk00
If they add some little visual perk, like an icon next to your youtube name, I
bet popularity in this would grow.

------
paulsutter
Did this work for anyone? I tried it and saw no change, even on the websites
they suggest on the checkout page.

------
thuruv
Don't anyone here think 45% of the web content are ads which are being forced
in to the page?

------
gress
If Google thought there was a problem with intrusive ads, they would penalize
them.

------
maelito
So you can't try the website before paying right ?

------
sudo-i
Isn't a form of extortion?

------
hewhowhineth
Sounds like racketeering :)

------
rumayor
very cool. Does this block ads on google itself?

------
3efuk
hahahaha

------
oldpond
I'd pay to remove the ad makers.

------
hguillermo
I like [https://www.adieu.io/](https://www.adieu.io/). You should try it

------
kazinator
Of course Google will pocket a big chunk of the revenue, doh! It's a clever
scam to exploit people's guilt to get them to part with some cash, nothing
more.

Donate directly, your favorite sites, and then block their ads yourself.

Do not pay this "opt-out ransom".

Heck, it's better to send a donation to someone who makes free ad-blocking
software.

------
jacques_chester
Google Contributor can't work, for two reasons.

1\. As soon as it becomes too widespread, Google will nerf it. They rely
almost entirely on advertising for their revenues. There's just too much money
for them to not water the scheme down in future.

Remember when cable TV was going to be ad-free?

2\. It only works inside Google's semi-walled garden. This is true of every
microsubscription scheme so far built (Spotify, Amazon Underground, Apple
Music). They have all required a walled garden in order to avoid massive fraud
and money laundering.

I'm biased, because it so happens that I solved the second problem. I have a
patented protocol which is opt-in, can reliably track users on the web without
identifying them and which is resistant to fraudulent visits.

I'm building the first release. Contact me if you're interested:
jacques@robojar.com.

~~~
dragonwriter
> As soon as it becomes too widespread, Google will nerf it. They rely almost
> entirely on advertising for their revenues.

Contributor directly replaces advertising revenue; if it provides a better UX
for end-users, sites that use exclusively traditional advertising rather than
Google's model with Contributor will suffer reduced traffic (and thus, won't
get money from advertising.)

If Contributor gets widespread, its good for Google, increases costs for
advertisers to reach eyeballs (whether they use Google's ad network or not),
and bad for ad networks other than Google's that don't do something like what
Google is doing with Contributor.

> It only works inside Google's semi-walled garden.

It certainly only works on sites that actively choose to use Google's
advertising network. I'm not sure that's a "walled garden" in any meaningful
sense.

~~~
jacques_chester
If the price of advertising goes up, Google will be incentivised to water down
Contributor. An equilibrium might form, but in the long run it probably won't
be "ad free". Google can't get away from the contradiction.

> _I 'm not sure that's a "walled garden" in any meaningful sense._

Hence "semi-walled". It's walled in the sense that only Google's ads are
affected. They can somewhat reliably track users on sites that belong to
Google's network. They can't do so otherwise. I imagine they solve fraud with
their existing tools.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If the price of advertising goes up, Google will be incentivised to water
> down Contributor.

The Contributor model, as I understand it, intrinsically scales costs (or
effects) to the cost of advertising, with participants effectively bidding
against advertisers for their own views. So, no, they wouldn't be incentivized
to water it down if the price of advertising goes up, rather, the fact of
Contributors success would drive the market-clearing price of advertising up
_while_ driving up Google's revenues from its ad networks, simply by
increasing the market for its ad networks from "advertisers" to "advertisers +
contributors".

> An equilibrium might form, but in the long run it probably won't be "ad
> free".

It will probably be ad free for the users willing to pay the most money to
avoid ads, and less so for those willing to pay less.

Which, ultimately, is a pretty reasonable market-based solution. You choose
the content you wish to consume, and you choose the degree to which you'd
prefer to pay money vs. viewing ads.

~~~
jacques_chester
I still disagree that Google won't water it down, or raise the price of
Contributor. But I'm obviously talking my own book and they theirs, so YMMV.

