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Google Launches Service To Replace Web Ads With Subscriptions
An anonymous reader writes: Everyone understands by now that ads fund most of the sites on the web. Other sites have put up paywalls or started subscription bonuses, with varying success. Google, one of the web's biggest ad providers, saw a problem with that: it's a huge pain for readers to manage subscriptions for all the sites they visit — often more trouble than it's worth. And, since so few people sign up, the subscription fees have to be pretty high. Now, Google has launched a service called Contributor to try to fix this situation.
The way Contributor works is this: websites and readers can opt in to the service (and sites like Imgur, The Onion, and ScienceDaily already have). Readers then pay a fee of $1-3 per month (they get to choose how much) to gain ad-free access to all participating sites. When the user visits one of the sites, instead of showing a Google ad, Google will just send a small chunk of that subscription money to the website instead.
The way Contributor works is this: websites and readers can opt in to the service (and sites like Imgur, The Onion, and ScienceDaily already have). Readers then pay a fee of $1-3 per month (they get to choose how much) to gain ad-free access to all participating sites. When the user visits one of the sites, instead of showing a Google ad, Google will just send a small chunk of that subscription money to the website instead.
Haven't seen ads since I installed adblock plus and no script. Cost me nothing.
Signing up for this basically asap.
But if the price is the same no matter how many different sites you consume, or how much of their bandwidth you chew up, well...I'm not sure how I think about that, from an "I want my favorite websites to actually get money" point of view.
Will this work with google analytics disabled/blocked. If not, no thank you.
That's all.
Do you really want to help fund sites that tricked you to go there in the first place? This will just encourage even more SEO BS,
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
So The Onion's online edition is essentially worth some small fraction of what a reader is willing to pay for their $1 to visit 50 websites per day. I guess that amounts to about $0.05 per subscriber or considering 10 pageviews per visitor that's $5 CPM. No matter how bad ads are, they pay out closer to $20 RPM for USA visitors and most of these companies claim they are barely breaking even right now. How would getting less revenue help more?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
This could turn into a real micropayment system.
About 7 years ago I (incorrectly) predicted that ISPs could bootstrap micropayment systems by allowing users to put money into an account with their ISP. When the user visits a site with ads, the site could "bill" the customer via the ISP anonymously, transparently to the user, and cheaply. The payment system would essentially live in the ISP's HTTP proxy server.
The Google model sounds like a variation of that, with Google collecting the money and distributing the micropayments to the web site via the ad network.
A similar ad-free subscription-oriented option will be available for YouTube soon. I am surprised to see this announcement without it connecting to that one.
Or you can just use Adblock like any sane person and just not deal with it, funding be damned.
Honestly I'm the type of person you do NOT want to advertise to. The more annoying the advertising the more likely I am to make it a point to avoid that product / service as much as possible.
Dear Google,
Why didn't you just buy Flattr instead? https://flattr.com/
(And pay off Brokep's debt while at it)
it's in my head
My first question is what needs to be allowed in order for this to work? Do I have to whitelist sites in adblock? NoScript? Do I have to abandon those addons?
What about any of the anti-tracking stuff I use?
And, lastly, the main reason I use all of that is because I got very tired of clicking on a site and WAITING FOR ALL THE SHIT TO LOAD AND RELOAD AND RERELOAD.
I might use this. I might not. But there isn't enough information available right now to tell whether it will be better or worse for me than what I'm doing today.
Because when you do this, you are giving google information on all the websites you visit.
Want to advertise to people that visit the Onion? Well, google can do that now - as soon as you leave the Onion, your next ad will be for Cracked.com or some other funny website in competition with The Onion.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I would love one. I would actually pay as much as $100/month for a fully ad-free web experience (and I realize that most adds are not Google ads.) But $3/month is a no-brainer. Hope this includes YouTube.
Here comes Google to totally take over their market, and then bail on it in a year or two when it gets boring.
Perhaps this is because Google sees Patreon as the future, and wants to scuttle it now, so ads rule the roost?
The ads are replaced with a small message thanking them for being a contributor. The space where the advert would have been is filled with a pixelated pattern, instead of being removed entirely
Maybe we'll get to see pop-ups with pixelated messages of thanks!
What I'd expect is that the boxes where the ads were will be empty, but the layout of the website (tailored originally around those boxes) will be identical.
Competent CSS will result in the boxes being gone and the page re-flowing.
The Firefox add-on Stylish allows you to do this with any web site. I do it with Slashdot to make the comments fill my browser from left to right margin.
they do it in exactly the same way as they do for adverts (using the same mechanism). You're paying for your own advert, essentially. When you visit, it's logged in googles ad network alongside the rest, and paid to the website's account periodically as part of the same process.
Although the amount you're paying seems small, the amount per eyeball will work out very close to that of a traditional google ad. they will only get microcents from google for your single visit if you see an ad from Chrysler, or you pay yourself.
The real genius here is that after people accept this business model, Google can charge a premium to advertisers to "break through" to the user... I'm sure it's in the fine print already... you can pay to ignore "standard" tier advertisements, but it says nothing of Premium tier.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
You get content that costs someone resources to create and give them nothing not even the ad revenue.
I use a click-to-play plug-in, not an ad blocker per se. This is because I'm willing to give them ad revenue, so long as the ads are static (text or PNG/JPEG), as opposed to ads that are animated in a CPU-hogging and data-quota-consuming manner (Flash, video, or Flash video). Yet a lot of sites don't get the hint, and they continue to serve what I see as a white box with a Flash Player logo inside instead of noticing that the Flash ad isn't playing and replacing it with a static ad. Am I still a freeloader?
How clever is Google... being paid to display ads and also being paid not to display ads.
It's a win-win.
Do no eViL -- yeah, right! ;-)
the first one is free, the next ones you pay for... So Google creates a shit load of addicts that will want to pay them to remove the ads that they posted in the first place. Whats that remind me off, drug dealers and protection rackets.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
And for users who pays $10 per GB for Internet access, video ads on pages other than video description pages cost the user money.
If paying a small subscription would eliminate Google's tracking nonsense then sign me up, but from the link it seems that all it does is replace the adds with a "thank you" message. I can get that for free with add block and no script that also reduce the clutter on the page, vastly improve load times, and improve security.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Remember how cable TV was supposed to be ad (commercial) free, because the subscription fee was supposed to be the primary source of revenue? How long did that last?
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor
...is Patreon not a middleman?
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
So you are saying that you should not help fund sites you like because you may accidentally send a fraction of a cent to a site you didn't mean to go to. Occasionally.
What I'd expect is that the boxes where the ads were will be empty, but the layout of the website (tailored originally around those boxes) will be identical.
Competent CSS will result in the boxes being gone and the page re-flowing.
So you're saying that this will not work well with most sites?
I have a subscription to the NY Times.
I still get loads of ads on my tablet with no adblock.
Adblock is your friend.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
But if they remove the boxes and the site reflows, how are you aware that you're receiving the service (no ads) that you paid for?
May seem strange, but the absence of ads wouldn't really be noticed (the same way you mainly tune them out at the moment anyway) but a box not showing an advert, or thanking you for a contribution, where an advert should be gives you that positive confirmation that you're getting something for your money.
I made the same point in my submission on this, that you'd prefer a better laid out, easily read site. But the weird thing is, you'd probably not appreciate it!
There's also the danger of a protection racket angle on this - "hey nicely presented site you're reading here, be a shame if any adverts came along to spoil it" but I may be going to far....
I'm going to add that to my website! I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make a profit of 25 cents before the end of 2015!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Seconded.. My behavior exactly!
Hosts alone does not a security policy make. Putting an ad blocker or plugin click-to-play on top of hosts helps especially when the ad server runs on the same hostname as the main server or when the ad servers have a large variety of subdomain names.
I'd love to be able to assist with this project. However, my issue is not advertising, but tracking. By using this method, one must, by definition, allow Google to see how many times you visit which sites, and how much time you spend on each.
Presently, I use FoolDNS and Ghostery, and intentionally allow ads through - I want websites to be able to get additional ad traffic. I'm perfectly okay with ads. Personally, I've got two rules: 1.) Don't track me, and 2.) Don't infect my computer with malware. I personally think that these are very reasonable requests to make.
Aunt Google will never make a system that doesn't involve tracking me. If the EFF or ACLU wants to make a system like this, I'll sign up tomorrow, NO problem. Google? I'll stick to giving them as little information as I can.
I use AdBlock Pro as a browser extension.
However, I'm excited about the prospect of installing it on a router, and that's what I'm gonna do on my new Asus RT-AC87.
I currently run OpenWRT on a D-link DIR-825, and guessing I could install it there. But I want 802.11ac and a router that can handle a VPN connection at something closer to my cable modem throughput (currently, 120mbps down/20mbps up). The DIR-825's CPU is out of gas.
OpenWRT for the AC87 will likely never happen, or be hobbled by open-source drivers if it does, but ASUS has open-sourced their own ASUS-WRT and distributes binary drivers with it. So, I will use ASUS-WRT-merlin and there's an AdBlock service you can install from the package installer. It'll block ads from going to your portable devices, iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. which do not have any plugin capability in their browsers.
You need to set fix DHCP reservations for your devices, and add the addresses to the AdBlock preferences on the router.
I fucking hate when people copy pasta into Slashdot! I don't need any more marinara sauce!
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
It's kinda interesting; your posts read a lot like the text on a bottle of Dr. Bronners.
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
I pay for netflix monthly because it's commercial free.
If I am to pay for news, it has to be commercial free. No ads, no fake story ads, just content.
Piss off until then.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I think that's the way to do it. It's a win-win situation. Giving Google money so they can track you even better seems like a bad idea.
It solves the problem of advertisements, which is kind of a solved problem using adblock, and as APK repeatedly reminds us, by hosts file.
But it accentuates the bigger problem - now Google knows exactly what you did last summer , since you have to be logged in to use your hard earned money's worth.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I am disappointed in Yahoo.com I had been a member since it was founded. In fact, I paid my $20/yr to insure no ads But last year Visa changed rules and my Visa provider was there, ahead of the crowd, with the new rules implemented. My Visa supplier does not trust the code on the reverse of the card when supplied by an online site. Ergo, VISA intercepts the request from vendor, and asks me questions for which I and I alone know the answer. If I answer correctly, confirmation is given. But yahoo.com timed out on waiting for Visa, and did not tell me that it happened. Suddenly, ads were back. I explained to yahoo.com what happened, and that I should be allowed the old rate, but it fell on deaf ears. So, Yahoo.com, You still have me, but you have soured me from recommending your site for anything, including search engine use. I think that a dollar a month is a reasonable rate to not be presented with ads, not $4/mo.
There are other ad blocking tools out there that are lower level, and thus more general purpose, than browser plugins. I have been using Admuncher for 15 years, and what I like about it is that it operates below app level, so that I get no unwanted ads or tracking cookies in any app (two diff browsers, IM apps, etc.).
No, what I'm saying it that this will encourage even more clickbait, spammy sites, etc., since now there's a guaranteed (though small) payment for EVERY visitor.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
admen don't trust webmasters on clickview counts reporting.
Then why do they trust Google and the other major ad networks on clickview counts reporting?
Putting an ad blocker or plugin click-to-play on top of hosts
Hosts are a ALSO valuable added layer of security!
That's what I was trying to imply. Adblock is a layer, and hosts is a layer.
I don't think the edge case of someone having flash, but having it click-to-play, is big enough yet to try to tackle.
The click-to-play add-on I use reportedly has nearly a million users. And for some plug-ins, Firefox makes click-to-play the default.
AdMuncher's not free. It costs money. Apk's hosts file solution's free.
AdMuncher used to cost a few bucks, but earlier this month the author gave notice that they are no longer charging for it. So I guess now it costs the same as apk's program.
It's okay if AdMuncher is not as efficient as hosts file magic. AdMuncher solves my ad blocking problems in one go and gives me all the control I need.