20 years ago, I knew plenty of people who would be willing to pay good money for a TV service without ads.
Today I find almost no one willing to pay enough for, say, Facebook without ads. Most people I asked say $0 or $1/month. To get the same revenue as they currently do, FB would need to charge $20/year to everyone. Since many (most) will not pay that amount, they need to charge even higher.
I don't see how a company like Facebook would make that much profit without ads.
And to be frank, decent enough non-ad supported alternatives exist. I can't get one person in real life to switch to them.
News is another example that mostly hasn't worked without ad money. There are some examples (e.g. government funded), but even those don't have enough reach compared to what the ad supported ones did 20 years ago.
That it worked for TV is not an indicator that the general model can be applied to all ad-supported services out there.
20 years ago, I knew plenty of people who would be willing to pay good money for a TV service without ads.
Today I find almost no one willing to pay enough for, say, Facebook without ads. Most people I asked say $0 or $1/month. To get the same revenue as they currently do, FB would need to charge $20/year to everyone. Since many (most) will not pay that amount, they need to charge even higher.
I don't see how a company like Facebook would make that much profit without ads.
And to be frank, decent enough non-ad supported alternatives exist. I can't get one person in real life to switch to them.
News is another example that mostly hasn't worked without ad money. There are some examples (e.g. government funded), but even those don't have enough reach compared to what the ad supported ones did 20 years ago.
That it worked for TV is not an indicator that the general model can be applied to all ad-supported services out there.