
You will never escape ads by paying for content - hliyan
http://zen.lk/2015/07/19/Why-you-will-never-escape-ads-by-paying-for-content/
======
striking
Doubtful. Many websites across the Internet are ad-free when you pay for it,
such as Ars Technica [1] and Slashdot [2]. Many apps do the same thing,
offering In-App Purchases of "Disable Ads, $0.99". People wouldn't offer the
option unless (1) they're inept and illogical or (2) it actually makes money.
I'm willing to bet it's the latter.

And even then, people love getting rid of ads. Whether you're blocking them
with AdBlock Plus [3] or blocking things in a hosts file or firewall [4], or
even just pirating things outright [I'm not posting a link to TPB], people
hate having their minds filled with garbage.

It's a waste of time, waste of space, and honestly will just disappear
asymptotically. It will probably never leave us entirely, but it will
effectively be gone (as far as I know).

[1]:
[http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/](http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/)

[2]:
[http://slashdot.org/faq/subscriptions.shtml](http://slashdot.org/faq/subscriptions.shtml)

[3]: [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet-
user...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet-users-that-
employ-AdBlock-Plus-or-similar-ad-blocking-plugins)

[4]: [http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-desktop-
client/Tutoria...](http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-desktop-
client/Tutorial-How-to-disable-Skype-advertisements/td-p/3316902)

~~~
austenallred
The fundamental disconnect is this: Advertisers are willing to pay more for a
split second of my attention when I'm casually browsing than I am to pay for
all of the content I come across.

Of course, not all sites are created equal. I'm willing to pay for Netflix to
get rid of ads in TV, I pay for Spotify so there are no ads in my music, and I
pay for Kindle books, so no ads there either. But I also make a lot more money
than the average person, and am a lot more invested in the media I consume
than most people. Yet, even for me, a lot of the stuff I access online I'm
accessing very casually, and would never pay a significant amount for. It's
not that I don't care for it to exist, but I'm not invested in its existence
enough to pull out my credit card.

Basically, ads everywhere are your tax for using the Internet.

If, theoretically, some micro-tipping system worked out, where you filled up
your wallet with $x/month and it was drained each time you visited a site, my
guess is people would be blown away at how expensive it was to brows the
Internet.

To make such an ad-removal system work at scale ( to make ads "disappear"),
you would either have to 1. Have every site with an opt-out ad system, or 2.
have every site do that and lock people out who don't pay.

#1 will never happen, because Facebook knows it makes more from advertisers
than you will pay. #2 will never happen because most people _won 't_ pay for
content - only a few sites can get away with that, and just barely.

~~~
8_hours_ago
> The fundamental disconnect is this: Advertisers are willing to pay more for
> a split second of my attention when I'm casually browsing than I am to pay
> for all of the content I come across.

It would be interesting to have a browser extension that kept a running tally
of how much advertising revenue has been generated by your browsing. "You have
seen $x of ads today"

~~~
austenallred
Some adblock extensions have that function as a number. You could estimate
that with a CPM, but the price of ads varies greatly.

------
shoo
Okay, let's try an obviously ridiculous thought experiment:

Can we apply the same argument to physical books?

I bought a book a few weeks ago for about $20, from a physical book shop. It
is a non-fiction book. It is pretty good. I am about 2/3rds of the way through
it. The book contains no advertisements. Shock! Why is this?

I suspect the argument is glossing over a few details!

Maybe we could get a firmer idea by trying to quantify things. E.g. estimating
_how much_ people would pay, and _how much_ that would be worth to potential
advertisers, etc.

~~~
bnegreve
But that works for movies. When you go to the cinema, you pay, yet you get ads
before the movie and sneaky product placements during the movie.

~~~
mattmanser
There are adverts in books too. A friend told me to read a new Bond or a
Bourne book (can't remember) and it was one long series of product placements.

~~~
jpollock
That was "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", which was full of paid product
placements.

------
aikah
> So the more you pay to keep ads away, the more advertisers will pay to put
> them back in

Except people are not paying to keep ads away, that's the point. Basically
what happened to artists 10 years ago is happening to ad backed websites :Most
People just don't want to pay for content on the web, period. Online
advertising won't save the Buzzfeeds or the dying press when people use ad
block massively. They'll have to find other ways to make money.

------
bryanlarsen
This is exactly the reason why you pay for newspapers and magazines.
Newspapers and magazines make ~90% of their revenue from advertisements. (Or
at least they did before the internet killed their business model) If they
made the newspaper free, it would increase their distribution by an order of
magnitude or so, and since advertisers pay rates based on readership, you
would think that would also increase their revenue a similar order of
magnitude.

But it doesn't work that way -- paying readers are worth a lot more than users
who didn't pay for the newspaper / magazine.

------
JustSomeNobody
Quarterly Earnings Reports.

You start a startup and offer subscriptions for content. You go public and
everything is great. Then you have a bad quarter. Then another. Your
stockholders are going to pressure you to find ways to quickly increase
revenue (because thinking further into the future than a quarter is for
losers, right?). You introduce ads. You have an amazing quarter. Then another.
About this time your core user base is exiting for a new startup with a
subscription model and no ads. You then have a string of bad quarters. You're
in a downward spiral. Was, Rinse, Repeat.

~~~
diminish
Right now I m staring at twitter picture content on my Android notification
area. Are they gonna be ads soon?

Most executives will carefully introduce ads by making A/B testing. So your
scenario can only be made true by blind and dumb executives. And yes they are
many.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
They are neither blind nor dumb. However, they can only see in green and have
a single-minded focus on seeing more green.

------
delinka
In the cases that I can't escape ads by paying, I tend to move away from the
content with ads.

For example, Hulu - I was a paying customer, but the relentless advertising
drove me away. It's slightly different with HBO Now - I get ads, but for other
entertainment on the same provider; this is much less bothersome. Ars
Technica: I'm not a subscriber, I read often, but I tolerate the laser-focused
advertising because the content is excellent, the ads are not obtrusive and
they actually target me quite well.

tl;dr- It's always more complicated than a simplistic blog post indicates.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I also ditched Hulu over the ads. Their app kept crashing my Roku as well.
Either one of those would have been enough reason. Who wants to pay someone to
lob obnoxious ads at them?

------
codeshaman
Totally agree with the author.

Obligatory quote by Bill Hicks:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5LEYG5TqaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5LEYG5TqaI)

And a deeper analysis by George Carlin:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2JInyMoPc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2JInyMoPc)

------
ChuckMcM
Well as most people point out, while advertisers want to get to people with
"buying power" not everyone selling content to such people is willing to be a
shill for them.

Or put another way, there are plenty of content creators who would create
entirely advertising free experiences for their content consumers if they
could make a living doing that.

What I find more interesting is that there is advertising that I like/seek
out, for example back in the day Byte magazine had advertisers who by their
nature of establishing a relationship with BYTE were much less likely to be
frauds and they sold things that readers were interested in (parts, computers,
boards, Etc.) But there was an interesting level of annoyingness they stayed
below.

I pay for the Economist and read it on my iPad. The experience is largely
advertising free, and the ads it does have do not annoy me. This could change
of course, but then I would probably stop subscribing. It was less clear cut
with the NYTimes which I subscribed too and it still had annoying ads, I
complained a couple of times, and then eventually stopped subscribing.

And then there are the ads themselves. Something that is clearly a problem is
ad "networks" can have a lot of crap in them, and those are both annoying and
sometimes borderline fraudulent (or actually illegal in the case of the
Canadian pharmacy ads). That the networks replaced a staff of sales people who
were trying to sell businesses ad space on a month to month, week to week, or
day to day basis makes for a very expensive proposition for a content
provider. And yet it makes for a better experience for their reader if they
express an editorial sentiment over the advertising content as well. (which
print magazines have always done) The first startup I joined was doing a
magazine about Golf on the web in 1995. That startup was very interested in
ads that reflected the mission of the web site and were not "crazy". It made
for a better user experience.

------
dpatac
If you go back in time cable used to be something you paid for not to have
ads. Now look at us dumb folk, paying for cable/satellite and paying to see
ads. Books are also filled with ads - if they mention a product by name - most
likely it is placed there - American Psycho wow could not get past a page
mentioning some list of products...

~~~
iron_ball
Not arguing your larger point, but in American Psycho, the endless lists of
brands and clothing labels illustrate the protagonist's obsession with surface
appearance and the signals of wealth and status. It's one place where I think
the brand barrage is well-placed and even subversive—because who wants to be
like Patrick Bateman?

------
fixermark
Interestingly, Google has just launched a project to test that theory:
[https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/)

What happens when you let readers become bidders in the ad auction for their
own attention?

~~~
ethanbond
Ah, fantastic. You're telling me I get to _pay_ in order to have my screen
real estate chewed up by "thank you messages," get "fewer ads on _some_
websites," _and_ I get to have all of my browsing behavior tracked, too?!

What a steal!

~~~
fixermark
You of course don't have to... In which case you get your screen real estate
(and computer cycles and attention) chewed up by ads, get fewer ads on _no_
websites, and get to have all your browsing behavior tracked too.

Alternatively, you can install an ad-blocker, which will never be supported by
sites that run ads (so will break them in exciting ways), can come with its
own can of worms regarding tracking your browsing, and puts a publisher in a
tragedy of the commons where if enough people go that road, they can't
generate ad revenue and will have to seek other options (see sibling threads
for side-effects).

Alternatively, you can seek out media that is entirely ad-free of its own
volition; you'll curtail your own consumption, but it's an option.

It's a wide, free world out there.

~~~
ethanbond
Or Google can also try to put forth a serious proposal for what they're
clearly acknowledging as a problem.

------
Silhouette
I run a web site that produces original content at significant cost. We charge
a small monthly fee for access. We don't carry ads, and have no plans to.

That being the case, how exactly is someone who values our content and pays us
for it going to get more ads as a result, no matter how much any third party
might want to advertise to that person through our site?

~~~
droopyEyelids
Does your website have a business development team that discusses the best way
to drive revenue for the enterprise? If not, you may be comparing apples to
oranges.

~~~
Silhouette
No, it's not really that kind of site. But then many of the sites I value
myself and the content I read also aren't that kind of site.

There are plenty of people in the world willing to produce good content
without trying to maximise every last drop of potential revenue, and who for
whatever reason prefer not to carry ads next to that content. Some of them
just blog for fun. Some, like the site I mentioned, charge to cover the costs
and maybe make some modest profit, but in a niche market you're never going to
become the next Google or Facebook anyway. Sometimes the whole site is run for
reasons other than direct profit anyway, for example if the site itself is a
promotional exercise for some brand or store or charity awareness campaign or
freelancer, or if it's some sort of community or government site with its
costs covered by other means. None of these sites need to carry the kind of
ads I think we're talking about here.

Of course there are also sites that are very commercial in nature and do want
to do everything they can to maximise revenues. If that means carrying ads,
they'll do it. But as long as those sites aren't the only places you can find
good content, the original premise will be flawed.

------
xiphias
Ads aren't bad by themselves. Annoying ads that take my time and focus away
are bad (for example video ads are mostly annoying as they always take my time
away even if it's just a few seconds)

~~~
rimunroe
> Ads aren't bad by themselves

That is not something that everyone agrees with (although neither is what
constitutes an "ad"). There are obviously grey areas and arbitrary lines get
drawn, but I personally feel like the whole concept of intentionally trying to
influence someone to buy/consume/want something that they don't already desire
is a a little ethically dubious.

~~~
ionised
Agreed.

I consider it psychological manipulation. Nothing more.

------
eevilspock
This is the most ridiculous, hyperbolic, clickbait bullshit I've ever seen
(today).

First contradiction: "you will never" and "With the way the world currently
works". Which is it?

Second contradiction: "you will not escape ads by paying for your content" and
"So the more you pay to keep ads away, the more advertisers will pay to put
them back in." No. If you are paying for your content, by definition there are
no ads. If advertisers outbid you and get ads into the product, then by the
definition you are only partially paying for the content. To maintain your "I
pay for my content" status you would demand the ads be removed or stop
consuming from that publisher.

And no, the solution isn't to make advertising illegal. It is to render it
irrelevant, impotent, wasted money. We achieve that with:

\- a reliable fully crowdsourced independent recommendation system that
consumers can base purchase decisions on, allowing them to reject ads as
biased at best, manipulation and lies more often.

\- a movement where people stop using any ad-supported products[1], realizing
that said products are not only _not free_ , they are _more expensive_ [2].

\- shifting all the greatest minds of our generation from working on getting
people to click ads[3] to figuring out micropayments, crowdfunding or an
entirely new model to make the web accessible to all, without ads.

-

[1] Don't Be A Free User:
[https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/)

[2] Advertising makes nothing free:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237)

[3] "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people
click ads. That sucks." – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data
Team, founder of Cloudera

------
tome
This is an ingenious observation, but why doesn't the argument work for
something Netflix which[1] doesn't have ads.

[1] unless I'm very much mistaken -- I'm not a Netflix subscriber

~~~
joshuapants
No ads on Netflix unless you count the header on the page giving you a
notification that new content is available, the carousel that rotates through
new/interesting content, or the suggestion of other things you might be
interested in after finishing a movie/series while the credits roll. No
external ads, no commercials while you watch, just unintrusive elements that
serve to help both the user and Netflix.

------
a3n
Just because you pay for content on a site, and are shown no ads on that site,
doesn't mean that site can't make money from ads on your presence.

Isn't the value for online ads in following you around, and showing you
targeted ads all over the place?

Why couldn't a site just sell the fact of your presence and use on a site to
advertisers, including your habits while on the site? You could still be shown
targeted ads elsewhere, and probably never connect it with your use of the
original site.

------
emsy
My main argument against paying for web content is that people who care about
ads probably don't want to see them at all. What's the use to pay for a few
sites but others don't offer a pay model and still molest and track you? A
better model would be to pay the ad networks which in turn give money to the
website operators (similar to those music flats) but I think that's unlikely
to happen.

------
Trufa
Well the problem with this seems to be that it's sort of taking the internet
as a whole, of course I wont get completely rid of advertisements but I'd like
to get rid of advertisement at least in the services I care about, in this in
particular I am willing to pay.

------
circlefavshape
Not everything is commercial, and some content (wikipedia, open source
software) is free and _not_ ad-supported

------
vilmosi
Simple and to the point

------
wangii
just like in-app-purchases.

------
WorldWideWayne
Cable TV was supposed to be TV without ads because you were paying for it.
Look how long that lasted.

