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Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

mattcutts.com

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Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#241

Post by breischl »

ISL wrote: post #54

I've been using Contributor for the last month or so: 1) One needn't turn on all third-party cookies to make it work. Enabling a subset of [*.]doubleclick.com, [*.]doubleclick.net, and [*.]google.com is sufficient. 2) Contributor is the best existing solution to the third-party micropayment problem I've yet encountered. Direct contributions to sites are surely preferable, but not yet practical. Contributor would appe…

>> It installs a third party as a middleman... paying rent to Google...

I'm not sure that it is rent in the economic sense. They're providing one place to sign up and pay, and then distributing the money in a reasonably fair way. That's actually a valuable service.

I find that there are a lot of sites that I visit infrequently enough that I don't want/need to sign up for their service, but I still like to see the occasional article. For example, I read Economist articles when I see them linked. I don't want a full-on subscription, or even go through the hassle of creating an account, but if Google can throw them some cash on my behalf I'd be happy about that.

IIRC, the problem with a lot of micropayment schemes was that they never got big enough for critical mass. Perhaps Google has managed to do that by way of ads, and maybe they'll develop into what those schemes always wanted to be.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#242

Post by IkmoIkmo »

supercanuck wrote: post #140

This is great, now wealthy tech/content moral apologists can pay for the content they want while the rest of us can get on with our lives about using ad-blockers. Most of those properties, New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, Business Insider are currently making a profit, so why is there this moral outrage that they are not getting paid? These businesses are not charities, they are not owed your money when they cho…

You really think they'll continue to make money when inevitably adblocker software on any browser becomes as ubiquitous as messenger or camera software on a phone? That's the whole issue. The current ad model isn't really sustainable in that light. There's no outrage they're not getting paid, there is concern that extrapolating current trends, they won't get paid a few years down the line and will either shut down or enforce changes that radically change the internet for the worse.

You can either get a closed market where every piece of content is paid for like Netflix and you start to see all kinds of lock-in effects that drive monopolies (if I switch from this vendor to a slightly better one I can't transfer my music/files/videos/articles etc, so I'd rather stay with what I have), as well as putting a price floor on information that used to be free with inconvenience for potentially hundreds of millions who can't afford the digital subscription, which radically changes the internet. Or you can get a different compensation model for content, like paying not to see ads without having to subscribe to a particular business's content, or buy their content pieces on their platform. This is what that is.

Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think pretty naive.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#244

Post by robbrown451 »

I think it is a great idea. I probably won't use it, I tend to just tolerate ads and don't mind them if they aren't obnoxious. I get a lot of Amazon ads, and they typically show things that I am very much in the market for, since they know what I've bought and looked at. I don't mind that kind of ad.

What's needed is for ad blockers to have a setting that lets these Contributor "ads" through and blocks the rest, with the setting preferably on by default. My opinion is that use of an ad blocker, while refusing to pay for something like this (especially if it is priced such that Google and the web site make the same amount of money as if you saw the ads), is not ethical, as you are being a freeloader.

All the arguments made by those defending ad blockers tend to fall away when something like this is available. If you don't like ads, and don't want to pay directly, you probably shouldn't be consuming the content.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#245

Post by dragonwriter »

bandicity wrote: post #98
asimilator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has cleverly tricked us into keeping that industry aloft, essentially paying to keep something we hate alive. We hate content creators?

If I want content from content creators, I pay for it. Ads is the old print way of getting paid. Now, just restrict access and require a subscription. Have trial periods. Why are you so focused on ads when it 1. Doesn't make sense if users can just block it and 2. There are better options for me to pay content creators? If you aren't interested in my 'preference' you lose out. The customer is just trying to have a no…

> Ads is the old print way of getting paid.

> Now, just restrict access and require a subscription. Have trial periods.

Actually, subscriptions + trial periods was also a print way of getting paid. For much the same reasons as it doesn't work for most mass content on the web, it didn't work well as the primary source of income for mass print publications (though there were publications for which it replaced ads, for the most part, it just served to provide a paid circulation number which demonstrated to advertisers the size of the audience that was dedicated enough to a publication that they were willing to pay something for it, so it was a proxy measure for effective ad reach.)

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#246

Post by Nursie »

sinatra wrote: post #232
Nursie wrote: post #128

I find these things interesting, but not so much I won't use an adblocker. Perhaps I can buy into this and allow google ads, and then block the resulting 'thanks' text. I don't need that either. I find the whole thing odd though. I never click ads when I do see them, I literally have never, ever bought anything through advertising links. Even without an adblocker, the only reason the site would be getting money from…

I remember reading somewhere that 44% people think ads don't work on them.

I doubt that I'm 100% immune, I'm sure I do absorb all sorts of brand-growing crap all the time.

But I have managed to eliminate ads from my life to such a great extent now that they really do drive me up the wall when I get stuck seeing them. They're just not part of my daily landscape any more.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#247

Post by kbenson »

Nursie wrote: post #217
kbenson wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you think you'll do, what you swear you'll do, and what you actually do aren't necessarily always aligned. But that's also irrelevant. If they are paying to have pictures put in front of you for brand awareness, then that's what they are paying for,not ad-clicks. Assuming you can completely understand their business, strategies and intentions to the point that you can accurately judge what is best for th…

The fact that advertisers will use things like 'brand awareness' and other subtle ways to try to get into my brain against my wishes is, IMHO, an excellent reason for blocking.

That's also a good argument for holing up in a cave somewhere and never coming out. The whole of human culture and communication is full of subtle cues and plays on how our mind works, and has been for millennia.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#248

Post by sqrt17 »

blumkvist wrote: post #112
sqrt17 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ads stopped being pay-per-impression around 2001 or so. For actual money to flow, people need to click on ads. For the advertisers to want to spend money, people need to not just click on the ads but also convert (aka, go to the site and order something). Why does this matter? If the total ad space expands, and therefore the number of ad views increases, people will still buy about the same amount of products they bo…

>ads stopped being pay-per-impression around 2001 or so. Care to back that up with some proof. Cuz I have a pretty clear picture of ad spending and this is not true at all.

A clearer way to write this would be, pay-per-impression stopped being the default (or only) way of doing business sometime between 1999-2001. After a brief period where ads were predominantly text-based, ad inflation brought graphical ads and CPM back and nowadays can do CPC as well as CPM or CPA (cost per acquisition) links: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2472725?hl=en&ref_...

But don't let your clear picture of ad spending make you ignore the fundamental fact: there's no basic relation between ad views and advertising spending. More buzzfeeds mean that there will be more ads, but not more advertising dollars, and quality/expensive sites suffer just as heavily from the ad inflation driven by cheap content sites as they suffer from the 20-30% of people using ad blockers.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#249

Post by a3n »

lighthawk wrote: post #114
austenallred wrote: post #46

I've been a contributor member for several months now, because I firmly believe in two things: 1. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist. 2. Life without ads is much better. So here's what people need to know about Google contributor: 1. I pay for the highest level available. 2. I love not seeing ads. 3. This only works for Google-based ads, which are certainly common…

> or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it. Much of the web is noise and regurgitation. The reason that publications have started to churn out poorly thought out crap is that they have to get their pagerank up and stay relevant. The reason they have to do that is because if they don't do it, there are ad revenue dependent content generators out there that wi…

> Much of the web is noise and regurgitation. The reason that publications have started to churn out poorly thought out crap is ... ad revenue .... If you get rid of the ad revenue, you reduce the velocity of the crap engine, and then good content can again be successful on a subscription model.

That's one of the best good for all, social arguments against ads/for blockers that I've seen.

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