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So my question to all of those infuriated by those content producers who would "dare" to try to protect their ads is this: what viable alternative do you suggest?

Here's the alternative to advertising on which I've been working. Advantages: no cost to users, publishers earn money from their content rather than the stuff around it, and allows monetization of unbiased content (that unlike ads tries to tell the whole truth).

Yes, this is an ad. But because it's on-topic and in some way solicited, I think it's acceptable, and shouldn't be equated to something intrusive.

So my question to all of those infuriated by those content producers who would "dare" to try to protect their ads is this: what viable alternative do you suggest?

Here's the alternative to advertising on which I've been working. Advantages: no cost to users, publishers earn money from their content rather than the stuff around it, and allows monetization of unbiased content (that unlike ads tries to tell the whole truth).

Yes, this is an ad. But because it's on-topic and in some way solicited, I think it's acceptable, and shouldn't be equated to something intrusive.

Yes, it allows the advertisers to lie more effectively so they can bilk you out of more of your money than they could otherwise.

How so? How does me knowing that the model of guitar I'm looking for is available from some out-of-state dealer (who's offering free shipping, to boot!) for about 10% less than I can find it near where I live bilk me out of money?

Yes, ads are most likely to be helpful in finding the best vendor for a particular item. But how did you choose what model to buy? Ads provide less trustworthy information than editorial.

That ad is only being displayed because that vendor was the one willing to pay the most for that exposure, not because they offer the best price. A perusal of organic search results may turn up something better. There's also price comparison sites where the prominence and presence of a listing is less correlated to payment than pure advertising.

The act of advertising a service, or a product, is not intrinsically evil. And the act of connecting businesses advertising a product or service with customers who are more likely to be looking for that product or service means two things:
1) People not looking for that product or service are less likely to see those ads and have their time wasted by nonsense;
2) Advertisers have to spend less money connecting to the people who are interested in their products or services, which has a long-term effect of lowering prices through competition.

Advertising that is pushed to you is less likely to be helpful than advertising you request through search engines, deal sites, and manufacturer's websites, no matter how well-targeted they are. It's no coincidence that all these are going gangbusters, while display ads are in the doldrums, particularly due to their increasingly intrusive nature (both visually and privacy-wise).

Unfortunately this is bad news for publishers, who have relied on charging for surrounding their material with material they don't control. I think this will change, with greater use of affiliate-like systems that still allow publishers to retain editorial integrity.(Disclosure: I'm involved in one.) Publishers need to better cover the one good point that advertising provides -- discovery/awareness -- through better-compiled "what's new" and "real deal" lists.

How is it being injected into the process? In the course of doing my research, I decided to buy a particular Yamaha guitar, based on the reviews I found in several and my own experience with them.

So... I know the model I want, and now I want to look and see if I can find a good deal on it, and perhaps find people in my area who offer lessons and supplies... why wouldn't it be helpful to be able to compare prices of vendors who do business both online, and in my area? In some cases, the advertisements I've found are for businesses that I had no idea even existed, because they're miles away in towns I rarely visit - but easily found once I know they exist.

Do you think you clicked on enough ads on the review sites in order to properly compensate them for the help they gave you?

The problem is how the showrooms get payed for? will we move instead to individual manfactures paying for showpiece storefronts (maybe Apple stores already are this? do they expect to make a profit on on-store sales, or are they just giant adverts driving their sales through other channels?)

An insightful observation.

My company offers one solution — allow full-service retailers to get paid for the help they give to people, even when they don't make the sale.

How this works: When someone claims a cashback payment after a purchase, they're given an easy way to nominate the sources of purchasing help they received. The nominated sources can receive both a portion of the rebate and a bonus payment from the maker of the product that's been bought.

This should make all sorts of free help services feasible, including "stores" which focus on demonstrations and trial loaners, services you can ring to get advice from an expert, as well as better online comparison tools.

Marketing isn't the problem here as it is at the core of capitalism, it's unavoidable and without it, the market would be monolithic as only monopolist brands would be used. The problem is intrusive marketing. And if they can make enjoyable ads, I'm all for it.

Yes, marketing is essential for capitalism — but not advertising. Not only is advertising often interruptive (synchronous or highly diverting), often it is manipulative and delivers false information.

High-quality product-related editorial from trusted sources is a better way to find out about the market. There are ways to fund this without either paywalls or advertising (including product placement).

But like you, I applaud Google for this step. Ad-funded TV networks will be in even more trouble as more people hook-up the Net to their TVs and mobile devices.

I'd love to know the stats of how many choose to skip the ads.

Blocking ads in an ad-supported app (on any platform) is not at all different from blocking ads in a web site. The latter has been described numerous times on Slashdot, and while there were always some voices in support of "ad blocking is stealing!" POV, they were always few and far between (and quickly downmodded), and the mainstream opinion was always strongly "it's my box, and I can read websites the way I like on it, including suppressing ads".

And yet, in this thread, there is a huge number of responses that basically equate ad blocking on iPhone to stealing...

Yes, good point.

I think the difference is that:

1. There's a greater resistance for paying for information (mainly websites) than tools (mainly apps), probably because tools are more consistently useful.
2. There are more sources of information on a topic than apps for a task, so a subscription to a particular site is hard to sell.
3. Apps can be bought outright, but web-based information and cloud apps usually require regular payments.
4. Subscriptions to web apps and information are usually more expensive than mobile apps.
5. Buying a mobile app for a particular device is an easy and consistent process, as opposed to the anarchy of the web.
6. For people who do not want ads, the no-ad paid option is more often available for mobile apps than for websites. (Though in their iPad apps newspapers are trying to continue the tradition of having ads even in subscription publications.)

So blocking ads on the web is only likely to become regarded as morally questionable when either a mature web-based micropayment system is in place, or some alternative way of getting paid for providing information is commonly available.

consumer reports has its information online for subscribers. subscription is a small monthly fee.

there are similar services for specialty interests, for example Cooks Illustrated has a simply amazing amount of in-depth and pretty objective information about utensils and food available again for a small monthly fee. for example, they found that real vanilla extract isn't any better in baked goods, than the 20 times cheaper synthetic vanillin (it is however a lot better in custards and ice cream and that sort of thing).

the only question is doing it for "free". for most general consumer items, amazon works. for specialist items, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a periodical with web access, like Cooks Illustrated.

Because they only use it occasionally, it's hard to get people to subscribe to product review information. A publication like Consumer Reports is most attractive because it looks at commonly-bought products, but conversely is not a total solution because, as you say, it only covers a small fraction of products.

It's also hard to get people to pay upfront for individual sources of information when they can't be confident that it's going to help them.

The Amazon situation has several problems:

It's too much work to wade though many reviews to get a fair assessment, and so far Amazon hasn't found it worthwhile to summarize the range of opinion in any more detail than an average rating. And while end-user feedback is very valuable, so is the testing, comparison, and advice that professionals do best.

Second, Amazon (and the reviewers themselves) don't get rewarded for the help they provide when someone uses that information to make a purchase elsewhere.

Third, Amazon, as a vendor, isn't exactly an unbiased party -- they want you to buy one of the things they sell, preferably the most expensive. (But sure, not as bad as getting car advice from a dealer for a particular make.)

Finally, a helper (like Slashdot!) who makes some of their income from Amazon affiliate payments isn't giving their users an easy choice of vendors, and also doesn't get paid for their help if the user does indeed decide to buy elsewhere.

finally i know some smart people from various backgrounds who are working on micropayment systems. it's hard for me to imagine that taking off, but then again there's a certain charm in the idea of paying like $0.05 to read a vetted review about an item on a smartphone while I'm shopping.

"vetted review", is that reviews of reviews?

I'm involved with an alternative solution where consumer helpers are instead paid out of both manufacturer cashback payments and incentives that manufacturers offer those who provide pre-sales help to their customers and prospects. This reduces the need for both pay-walls and pan-handling. It also works for purchases at both online and bricks & mortar stores.

The problem I see with ads is editorial control.

With real magazines ads, editors have some kind of control of the ad after they receive it. For example, they can decide if they accept an ad with a full page giant penis in it selling v14gr4.

However, with web ads, the editors have no control over it. The advertizer has complete control of how the ad looks. And even though at the time of "contracting" the ad the editors may like the types of ad, maybe after a month the ad will get changed to something really annoying.

3rd-party ad servers do have one benefit: There is no direct relationship between content makers and product makers. With magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and direct online ad sales, there is a temptation to do secret editorial-for-content deals with their product-maker customers.

Advertising is most suitable for things like classifieds and job ads. But interruptions with agendas are a pretty silly way to learn about new products. It would be better if we paid people to help us select products.

It isn't so much the amount involved, which is the same as buying the dead tree version, it is the fact that it is quicker to find another newspaper on the internet than it is to find your credit card and type all the details in, whereas in a newsagent, it is pretty easy to find a pound coin in your pocket and hand it over.

Only a fraction of a paper's content covers widely-reported current events. Instead, much of a paper's most interesting material consists of original investigations of issues, as well as analysis and opinion pieces, neither of which can be found in another paper (except through syndication). The critical question is what fraction of people will pay to keep reading these, rather than choosing to find some other but different source of brain food.

What has triggered this crisis is not just the huge reduction in the cost of publishing and distribution that the Web has wrought, which has greatly increased competition in the market for information, but also the better ways product makers now have to get their message out — their own websites and through search marketing — which along with a viscous cycle of advertising overexposure is permanently sickening the display advertising industry, of which newspapers are a part.

One solution is for the papers to earn income directly from help they give their readers, rather than by giving over a large chunk of their readers' experience to flashing lights.

Product information and advice doesn't have to come in the form of a review. It could be a "What's New" newsletter, a consultant, an automated advisor, or a product demonstrator (who is currently also a salesperson).

And these "helpers" don't need to be (and often can't be) ad-funded. They are often funded by sales, direct or affiliate, which does create a huge conflict of interest. An alternative is funding consumer assistance from cashback money, and more arms-length manufacturer incentives.

Or, they need to find a new, workable revenue model for an age where people do not want to pay just to be informed about the world. The news itself must be subsidized by something else, some related business where the newspapers can use their reputation for quality journalism to boost sales. What that business might be, I do not personally know, but if it cannot be discovered, then you are right: journalists are going to be begging for money to do their work.

That related business is journalism that is more concretely worth something to its readers: helping them choose the most suitable product.

In the past the only reward publishers could (legitimately) get from this type of journalism was by selling ads around it, plus any money they made on the cover price. But as information distribution has opened up, ads-around-content is no longer as lucrative as it once was, particularly when they are cuting their own throats by making it more and more intrusive.

But lately more publications (including Slashdot) have been getting into the affiliate sales game, which gains them good revenue for some product-related journalism at the expense of involving their journalism in the sales process.

An alternative to affiliate sales is to make it possible for a product purchaser to identify which sources of advice helped them choose their product, and have those sources rewarded with either a share of any cash rebate the purchaser receives, or with a bonus payment from the product's maker. This allows publishers to be paid more often, including when they give a product a bad review.

As has always been the case, such journalism can subsidise hard news.

If you can't determine the value of news until after you read it, isn't any system based on pay-by-value voluntary?

Here's one voluntary solution and one compulsory solution. These only work for material that assists people in some direct or indirect way with product purchases. Such material can of course cross-subsidise hard news, as has always been the case.

Voluntary: Make it possible for purchasers to make donations to creators of material that has helped them choose the product they have bought, and allow these donations to be paid out of a manufacturer's cash rebate. Donations are more likely in this case because the donor is being prompted during a cashback claim to give a portion of something that's not yet in their pocket. No credit card required.

Compulsory: Allow publishers to charge a firm fee for an item, but allow this fee to be recovered from subsequent cash rebates the reader receives. The reader pays nothing up-front.

If you can't determine the value of news until after you read it, isn't any system based on pay-by-value voluntary?

Here's one voluntary solution and one compulsory solution. These only work for material that assists people in some direct or indirect way with product purchases. Such material can of course cross-subsidise hard news, as has always been the case.

Voluntary: Make it possible for purchasers to make donations to creators of material that has helped them choose the product they have bought, and allow these donations to be paid out of a manufacturer's cash rebate. Donations are more likely in this case because the donor is being prompted during a cashback claim to give a portion of something that's not yet in their pocket. No credit card required.

Compulsory: Allow publishers to charge a firm fee for an item, but allow this fee to be recovered from subsequent cash rebates the reader receives. The reader pays nothing up-front.

Instead of Facebook's community assistance, and Google's assistance from the cloud, a third way is Rbate's model of assistance from professional helpers, which includes a search engine that's dedicated to allowing people to find such helpers.

Helpers can not only include the usual forms of professional information, advice, and assistance (professional reviews, aggregators of consumer reviews, and full-service retailers), but consultants and recommendation engines that can offer more personalized service. Relying on reviews takes too much work to find and understand the information you're looking for, while retail service, which has often been pretty clueless, is further suffering due to competition from online and discount outlets.

If you pay these helpers for the help they give rather than the ads they expose or the sales they mediate (retailers & affiliates), you can make it easier for professional help to be free.

Eventually though, people be willing to pay fees for professional assistance for more products than just big ones like investment advice.

Instead of Facebook's community assistance, and Google's assistance from the cloud, a third way is Rbate's model of assistance from professional helpers, which includes a search engine that's dedicated to allowing people to find such helpers.

Helpers can not only include the usual forms of professional information, advice, and assistance (professional reviews, aggregators of consumer reviews, and full-service retailers), but consultants and recommendation engines that can offer more personalized service. Relying on reviews takes too much work to find and understand the information you're looking for, while retail service, which has often been pretty clueless, is further suffering due to competition from online and discount outlets.

If you pay these helpers for the help they give rather than the ads they expose or the sales they mediate (retailers & affiliates), you can make it easier for professional help to be free.

Eventually though, people be willing to pay fees for professional assistance for more products than just big ones like investment advice.

Only getting paid on "confirmed purchases". To me this is a rip of for webmasters. The few times I have bought something I saw advertised on a web page.. I didn't access it through the ad. I googled for it later when a need for such product arose. Ads don't usually have an immediate effect imo .. they are cumulative. You see a product name over and over.. and eventually decide to buy it. You see the same ad for some web host every time you visit a site.. then one day you need web hosting.. and the name pops up. Chances are you are not going to go click on the ad.. but non the less the ad was effective.

Vendors love cost-per-action because it gives them a predictable return on their investment. But yes, the publisher only gets paid for a fraction of the help they give to the consumer, as well putting pressure on the publisher to speak well of the product.

I'm involved with a company that has one solution to this problem: Asking consumers during post-purchase cashback claims to list the media and services that they found helpful, and then distributing product maker bonuses among the cited services. This allows the publisher to benefit even if the purchase was offline, even if they were only one of several sources that the consumer consulted, and even if they write a negative review that leads the consumer to another product.

Unless we move to a totally amateur system, there needs to be some way for professional publishers to get paid for their work.

The only method that avoids any conflict of interest is if the consumer of the media pays directly for its use. But the subscription model is breaking down as the web democratises publishing. Only a suitable micropayment system can save it.

Other ways of funding media are either becoming unsustainable, such as pushing distracting ads, or potentially compromise publishers' independence (negotiating advertising directly with product makers, or receiving revenue from (rarely disclosed) affiliate relationships).

I'm in favour of funding professional media by bonuses that product makers pay for the help they give to consumers, done in a way that is both fully-disclosed and buffers media from dealing with the bonus payers. Here's a summary.

Everyone's talking about how the advertising model isn't working, well what this says is that the subscriber model isn't working either. That doesn't leave many funding models to try... let's see... government subsidy, pledge drives and tip jars, billionaire sponsorship, bake sales, criminal enterprise, and "... ???? ... Profit!"

...helper?

I just launched Rbate, which also arranges cashback payments, but the product maker can also survey the purchaser and find out and reward the organizations that provided the purchaser with helpful advice.

Product makers can also survey those who bought a competing product, allowing them to find out why they lost those sales. The survey taker also gets paid for these answers.

In addition, consumers are given a search engine dedicated to purchasing help.

The aim is that money that product makers now spend on advertising instead funds better information for consumers, and better feedback from purchasers to makers.

I just launched Rbate, which also arranges cashback payments, but the product maker can also survey the purchaser and find out and reward the organizations that provided the purchaser with helpful advice.

Product makers can also survey those who bought a competing product, allowing them to find out why they lost those sales. The survey taker also gets paid for these answers.

In addition, consumers are given a search engine dedicated to purchasing help.

The aim is that money that product makers now spend on advertising instead funds better information for consumers, and better feedback from purchasers to makers.