

DoubleRecall (YC S11) Turns Paywalls Into Advertising Dollars - tadruj
http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2011/08/23/23gigaom-doublerecall-turns-paywalls-into-advertising-dolla-4130.html

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dpapathanasiou
This reminds me of the "Free Day Pass" salon.com used to have before it
scrapped the idea entirely:

" _So we put up an ad over the front door of the site. Subscribers wouldn't
see it at all; other readers had to watch a 30-second video ad, then they got
a 'day pass.'_

" _The day pass approach was beloved by the advertisers and hated by many,
though not all, readers. More important, by this point the public was,
understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It
took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again._ "

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/03/memories-
paywall...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/03/memories-paywall-
pioneer)

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BadCookie
I'd argue that consumers are accustomed to filling out CAPTCHAs, and thus are
less likely to be confused by these ads. As a reader, I would hate filling out
a DoubleRecall ad much less than being denied access altogether because I am
unwilling to subscribe. Of all of the Y-Combinator companies that I've read
about in this batch, I'm most excited about DoubleRecall on the basis of the
idea alone.

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3pt14159
Really? I'm not trying to knock them, they seem like they'll make money, but
the one you are most excited about?

<http://www.quartzy.com/>

<http://marketbrief.com/>

<http://bushi.do/>

<https://mongohq.com>

<http://scienceexchange.com/>

All look far more exciting to me.

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BadCookie
I think that there is a risk of high quality, New York Times caliber
journalism disappearing entirely. I'd prefer not to see that happen, and I
don't think that paywalls are the answer. So anything that can make quality
content more lucrative without forcing readers to actually fork over cash is
exciting to me. I doubt that DoubleRecall can single-handedly save journalism
or anything, but it might be a step in the right direction.

~~~
tomjen3
I hope they go, since their job isn't to provide high quality journalism, but
to expose illegalities, abuses of power and corruption none of which they do
much of anymore.

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eli
Cute. I can see how it makes sense from a publisher perspective.

But it seems like an audience of the sort of people who would rather jump
through hoops than pay a few bucks would not be very desirable to advertisers.

~~~
webwright
In terms of audience... At $120 CPMs, I think this might be NICE for
consumers-- ad-driven sites/apps need fewer ads to make a profit, can afford
higher quality content with higher revenues, etc.

Read about priming studies and call it "cute" again... I dare ya! :-)

Here's a summary of some of Bargh's priming experiments I grabbed from
[http://jurylaw.typepad.com/deliberations/2007/05/two_interes...](http://jurylaw.typepad.com/deliberations/2007/05/two_interesting.html):

In one experiment, Yale's John Bargh gave subjects seemingly random word
puzzles, with no apparent point or thread. Some of the puzzles containing a
subtle preponderence of "old" words: Florida, gray, wrinkle, lonely, bingo.
Walking down the hallway to leave after the exercise, the subjects who had the
"old" words walked more slowly.

The same paper describes an experiment in which, when they finished the word
puzzles, subjects were asked to find "the experimenter" to get their next
task. The experimenter was always involved in an interminable conversation
with someone else. Subjects whose word puzzles had scattered words invoking
rudeness -- bold, rude, bother, disturb, intrude -- had no trouble
interrupting. But a huge majority of subjects whose puzzles were full of
"polite" words -- respect, considerate, appreciate, patiently, courteous --
never interrupted the experimenter's conversation at all.

\---

With these studies in mind, I wonder about the impact of typing "diet coke
skinny" in terms of brand recall AND in terms of behavior after the fact.

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troyp
Do you know whether the effectiveness is reduced if people know they're being
primed?

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wmeredith
I have no citation, but I recall marketing studies that show that knowledge of
priming has little to no effect on the subject. Which blew me away.

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oyving
How does this work with people who are blind? Will they be able to notice the
highlighted words, or will they be denied access?

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shabble
any attempt at accessible (that is, text based) content will make it wide open
to automated solving and ruin the whole point.

Maybe an audio snippet could be used as an alternative, although actually
creating the audio (unless it's done with text to speech methods at the
server/creation time) is going to significantly bump up the cost of creating
the advert.

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jnw2
The Americans with Disabilities Act may not have much sympathy for the
inconvenience of providing accessibility, though.

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craigmc
Another form of advertising that I didn't know existed until today. I'm sure
that it will be everywhere in about 5 minutes, and there does already seem to
be more than a few companies doing this sort of thing (so clearly money is
being made!):
[http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=capt...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=captcha+advertising&oq=captch+ad&aq=0s&aqi=g-s9g-ms1&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=224450l227182l0l228190l10l9l1l0l0l0l187l1199l1.7l8l0)

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cshenoy
I like the idea but someone technically minded enough could scrape the article
from the source (at least from the demo CNN page they have up) [1]. But then
again, that would be a lot of work especially compared to typing in two to
three words.

[1]
[http://cnnmoney.transformer.doublerecall.com/2011/08/24/news...](http://cnnmoney.transformer.doublerecall.com/2011/08/24/news/economy/federal_budget_cbo/index.htm)

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mihar
You're correct and this is done by design. We're not a security feature but a
soft-monetization one.

99% of people aren't technical enough to go through any other way than
retyping.

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vessenes
This seems like one of those ideas where the devil is in the details --
balancing out something reasonable for consumers with what advertisers dream
of, while not screwing publishers.

I'm not sure how I'll respond to my first one; looking forward to seeing it in
action.

Dear DoubleRecall, I URGE YOU to mandate no video ads. That would be a first
step to providing a good consumer experience.

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tadruj
we hear you. SolveMedia has video, I'm not sure about engagement quality on
that.

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ajb
Eww, that's _so_ manipulative. I will never use this service.

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timeuser
This looks interesting. I'd like to try it out but the link to the iOS SDK on
their site doesn't work.

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mihar
Yep, sorry about that!

We've just fixed that (it was an outdated SDK file) with a direct link to our
mobile dashboard, where developers can sign up themselves and get their apps
running DoubleRecall in no time.

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tomjen3
How do you solve the "typing on a mobile phone" sucks?

