
Google's effort to get ad-avoidant site visitors to pay flounders - cpeterso
http://digiday.com/publishers/one-year-publishers-not-blown-away-google-contributor-adoption-rate-low/
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michael_h
The value for the user isn't there.

Netflix: $8 = no ads

Google Contributor: $10 = _half_ as many ads on a few websites.

uBlock is free for no ads. You have to be better than _that_. The web is a
weird place. I think people, abstractly, might be fine paying for good
content. Part of the problem is that the internet is brimming with garbage,
and no one wants to pay for garbage. If a user incidentally visits a site and
it isn't what they were looking for, they don't want part of their monthly ad-
bidding funds to go to that site.

I fear that since things have been free for 20+ years, people aren't going to
ever pay for written content. Maybe if we are forced to pay for every view,
we'll think twice about where it comes from and not waste money on clickbait.
Probably not.

~~~
archagon
I wish there was an easy way to make micropayments for articles, in the vein
of Amazon's one-click feature. Go to an article, hit a paywall, click a shiny
¢5 button, done. If the micropayment was small and I didn't have to enter my
CC info more than once, I'd do it all the time. Unfortunately, this would be
contrary to the way commerce works on the internet today. In order to maintain
security, it would probably have to be the browser, not a third-party service,
that handles your CC information. A new browser commerce protocol would have
to be created, and every platform vendor would have to support it. So it would
probably never happen.

> I fear that since things have been free for 20+ years, people aren't going
> to ever pay for written content.

Advertising really muddles everything and makes content feel "free", even
though it's clearly not. Content producers should do a better job of making it
clear that if users don't pay, they won't get their content.

~~~
justinv
Flattr sort of tried to do that. It never caught on, unfortunately.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr)

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3dfan
Fighting my way through the article, looking for some info I read this:

...uptake has been slow... ...the idea has gotten little interest from
readers... ...The adoption rate is very, very low... ...a tiny percentage of
the site’s overall inventory... ...has not been a meaningful driver of
revenue... ...the number of paying subscribers hasn’t been huge...

Dudes! Instead of repeating the same foggy sentence over and over and over to
make an article out of a simple number - how about giving a simple percentage
of how many readers have signed up and be done with it?

~~~
dalacv
Exactly! I thought I was getting senile reading that article...

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ryan-c
The last time Google contributor got brought up, I mentioned I'd be happy to
participate so long as I wasn't being tracked and could still block any
remaining ads. As is, it seems that running adblock would prevent contributor
from paying any of the sites I visit so I don't see the point.

I actually don't even run an adblocker any more - I just use a javascript
blocker set for "default deny" which seems to work just about as well as a
real adblocker.

~~~
micampe
How do you propose they pay websites you visit without tracking which websites
you visit?

~~~
ryan-c
I should have been a bit more clear - obviously they need to know who I am,
and they need to figure out billing, but they don't need to keep any long term
records or use those records for anything else.

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orf
$5 a month to see 15-25% fewer adverts seems like a bad deal, when I first saw
this announced I couldn't see any way of it working.

Google being financed by advertising is interesting, on one hand they pump a
lot of money into security (and lead the field in a lot of areas) but on the
other they take in a lot through scammy adverts. Just Google 'Chrome' on a new
computer and you will be faced with a whole bunch of "Download Chrome from
download.safe-webbrowsers.com" that are designed to trick less technical
people into installing crapware. Same for the endless diet pill and 'one weird
trick' adverts that scam people into eating the pill equivalent of crapware.

On a side note that title took me a while to process, I was wondering what
flounders are and why on earth visitors should pay them.

~~~
clock_tower
Surely you're familiar with flounders!
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder))
And they're in decline these days; paying them, to help keep up their
population, would make sense. :)

(If Google wanted me to pay flounders, I'd do it; but paying for ad-blocking?
I'd rather just block Google APIs with NoScript.)

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relaxatorium
This seems to be a service that costs more than all other ad-blocking services
and blocks vastly fewer ads than those services.

Additionally, it is run by the company that people who would be concerned
about ad trackers are probably the most concerned about.

I would be shocked if it gained any traction ever.

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alyandon
I'd be more likely to pay in exchange for no ads whatsoever than to pay money
and continue to be exposed to essentially an unaccountable 3rd party (the ad
network) when it comes to security issues like being served malware when that
3rd party gets hacked.

If micropayments were a thing I'd be willing to pay $1 for a day pass to view
an article on an infrequently read website as opposed to paying $50/yr which
is a complete waste of my money.

~~~
smt88
Micropayments are hopefully becoming a thing:
[http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/tipsy-a-simple-chrome-
exten...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/tipsy-a-simple-chrome-extension-
bets-on-readers-who-want-to-pay-a-little-for-the-content-they-consume/)

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jjcm
I use Google contributor, but only because I want something like this to
succeed. I don't actually like the implementation they have. The biggest thing
for me? I can't see where my money is going. At the end of the month, I want a
breakdown of where my money went.

I want to know that when I went and visited John Smith's blog, he earned $0.13
from that visit. Contributing feels good when you know where your money is
going. It's like a charity - you want to know your money went to a cause you
care about. Right now I think Patreon has a better model, but I like the
smaller increments that Google Contributor offers.

~~~
TheQwerty
They do give you a breakdown of where your money went at the bottom of their
website (when logged in):
[https://contributor.google.com](https://contributor.google.com)

It would be nice if they offered to e-mail this to you once a week/month or
provided more detail. Even better would be for them to show some of that
information in the place of the ads you've purchased.

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smt88
Here is an alternative that actually makes sense for users and content
producers, instead of favoring Google's ad business:

[http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/tipsy-a-simple-chrome-
exten...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/tipsy-a-simple-chrome-extension-
bets-on-readers-who-want-to-pay-a-little-for-the-content-they-consume/)

------
tosseraccount
Pay flounders?

Sounds fishy to me.

~~~
glup
My brain has a kernel panic every time I try to read the title.

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throwaway3453
Did Google's marketing department not the memo? Literally nobody outside of
the tech circle has the faintest clue what Google Contributor is.

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samfisher83
If AD Blocking becomes too prevalent I feel bad for the internet. There just
seems to be a large contingent of people who just don't want to pay for
content.

~~~
smt88
Ads don't pay that well. A small subset of people willing to pay are able to
support the content. There will always be freeloaders, but it costs almost
nothing to publish content.

As adblocking becomes more prevalent, the garbage-y sites will die, and the
market will pay for the content that's actually good. Sounds like a good thing
to me.

~~~
chc
I don't understand how you can square the idea that the market will pay good
amounts for content with the fact that ads are _ubiquitous_ , not just
something found on low-quality sites. If ads weren't the best way to make a
living, why wouldn't quality publications like Ars Technica just ask people to
pay?

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thatoneguy
Is there any reason why someone just doesn't make an adblocker that
surreptitiously clicks the ads so everyone gets paid _and_ gets to keep their
sanity?

~~~
tomtang0514
Because that's considered ad fraud. There're websites specifically doing this
such as have a silent video ad playing in a hidden div and try to get paid for
it. But the ad network is not stupid enough to pay for this kind of fake
"impression" where users don't even see the ad. In addition, this kind of
action will lower the advertising value of the website. So in the end, even
for the website itself, it's more harmful to have adblocker click on ads
rather than just block it.

~~~
Karunamon
Ok wait, fraud? That's a bit strong don't you think? The person running this
hypothetical plugin doesn't have any agreements with people to do or not do
anything with ads on a page. There is no obligation from someone viewing an ad
to not click on it for any reason.

That said, if you wanted to cause the ad industry to implode, you could do a
lot worse than creating a plugin that does precisely this and having it reach
critical mass.

As a bonus, it would completely screw up the analytics attached to your
tracking cookies/IP address.

~~~
tomtang0514
Well "ad fraud" is an official name for this kind of behavior. Consider in an
advertiser's perspective, I pay to get someone see my ad, and I even pay more
if people click on it. Now I've paid the click price but my ad is not seen by
any real person. That is fraud.

It might not be the user who use the adblocker committing the fraud, but that
user is getting involved. And the website ( unfortunately might not have any
control on this entire thing) is pulled into this chaos by the user and
adblocker, and will get harmed.

