Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by Nursie » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #264

Nursie wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't really watch ads so it's true I'm not thinking about how great an ad experience I'm having, because I'm not having them. As a result I find nearly all advertising, when I do come across it, to be intrusive and annoying.

That's exactly my point - you're only remembering your negative experiences as advertising experiences. You're even saying "watching", which leads me to believe that most of your negative experiences have been online or on television.

What other experiences are there? I don't listen to the radio much, and when I do it's the BBC. I don't read print publications any more (I read books, these tend to be ad-free). There are billboards I suppose.

And no, I'm not only remembering my negative experiences as advertising experiences - when one cuts advertising out of ones diet to the extent I have tried to all advertising seems incongruous and objectionable. I have successfully re-sensitised myself to it, and made my life much quieter and calmer without the constant sale-pitch.

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

#272

Post by a3n » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #261

TeMPOraL wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist. YMMV, I suppose we may be browsing different parts of the Internet, but I know content I love would mostly stay intact. From my personal and subjective experience, nearly everything that is actually worth anything on the Internet is made by unpaid volunteers for whom creating content is an end in itself, and not a way to ea…

> Topical subreddits And how is reddit funded?

Imgur kickbacks, I've always assumed.

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

#273

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:20 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #261

TeMPOraL wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist. YMMV, I suppose we may be browsing different parts of the Internet, but I know content I love would mostly stay intact. From my personal and subjective experience, nearly everything that is actually worth anything on the Internet is made by unpaid volunteers for whom creating content is an end in itself, and not a way to ea…

> Topical subreddits And how is reddit funded?

Doesn't matter. They don't create the content, but merely facilitate creation by unpaid volunteers.

Yes, they use ads, and if they didn't, I probably would be happy to pay or donate (if only to keep all the topical forums in one place and not revert to dark ages of phpBB and linear discussion threads). But let's not cheat ourselves - the ads are not paying for the content, they are merely supporting an efficient platform.

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

#274

Post by liamconnell » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

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…

Upvoted because its well thought-out, but here's what I'm thinkin...

> 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.

Sounds like a funny way to try to make the internet more "sophisticated." If you dont like the content of the regurgitation engine, then you wouldnt visit the site and so wouldnt be supporting it.

So something else is at play. I think that a huge portion of the public actually likes the regurgitated content. They come home from work and just want to chill out and be mildly entertained by buzzfeed. So addblockers dont reduce the velocity of the crap engine, they take away your patronage and therefore your vote for what content you want to see.

I think that there is so much low quality on the web because people value it very low. They only pay by viewing adds (and with privacy) so the media produced will reflect that.

Now think about what might happen with contributor. Those that hate viewing adds and some that block them will decide to pay for the add space of the pages they view. Then the value of addsense space goes up since advertisers are more confident that the people seeing the adds will not hate them and the website also gets money from those who are contributors. So the value of content goes up as well and that should bring the quality up as well.

> However, I see absolutely no problem whatsoever in blocking ads on my own without paying Google. Tivo allows ad blocking. DVRs allow ad blocking. I shouldn't need to pay every network or affiliate just to block ads.

You're not really paying google. Google takes a commission, which they deserve, and the money goes to the content creators. Tivo and DVR are bad examples since they actually did end an era in television and were not free so not very widely used for a long time.

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

#275

Post by Nursie » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #263

Nursie wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, when it comes to advertisements, I do that already. I don't watch broadcast tv, I don't read newspapers or magazines on paper, I listen to BBC radio if I listen to the radio, I have adblockers for the internet. Th world can be a quieter, calmer place when you stop letting people make sales pitches at you constantly.

That's an easy decision to make when you stop letting them make the sales pitches, but still take what they offer in exchange for those sales pitches. If you stopped the advertising and didn't view the content they offered in exchange, it would be quieter, calmer and a lot more boring .

>> If you stopped the advertising and didn't view the content they offered in exchange, it would be quieter, calmer and a lot more boring.

Not really, I already pay for my tv, music and radio directly (tv license, streaming services etc) so I don't have to be advertised at, and I'm seriously considering signing up for these various no-ad services for the web.

It doesn't have to be more boring without advertising, in nearly all media now there are ways to enjoy great content without letting the sales pitch in. I hope we find good ways with the web too.

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

#276

Post by eli173 » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #215

elorant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hate shitty content creators (like Buzzfeed) who replicate content from other sources or even worse disguise ads with content (i.e. native advertising) . We also hate paying for the whole site just to read a couple of articles every now and then. How about a pay-by-article model with widespread adoption from the industry? I'd gladly go for it. Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling w…

> Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling we kill ad blocking. Simple as that. As a nerdy guy, I'd much rather see video game ads than tampon ads. I get the ideological argument against targeted advertising, but the practical arguments for it are pretty compelling, too.

You don't need to be tracked for this to happen though. If ad networks placed video game-related ads on video game-related websites and tampon-related ads on tampon-related websites, then users of both sites would get ad content relevant to their interests.

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

#277

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

throwaway342526 wrote: post #176

Nursie wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, particularly with web advertising, if you've made me notice your brand then I will actively try to remember not to buy from you - I dislike advertising that much. By viewing the ad I'm not ripping anyone off, no, but a page taking money for me viewing an ad would be, as the outcome for the advertiser is getting a best neutral and likely actually negative.

Most people do not behave as you claim to. Advertising really does work. It's rational and has well-demonstrated ROI. You're either an outlier in terms of behavior, or you're not offering an honest representation of how you react to ads.

It's not rational, it's silly. It's a tragedy of commons problem coupled with a feedback loop - companies waste ever increasing amount of money, fuel, and man power, supporting a whole bullshit job industry in oder to compete with each other over a limited pool of attention and wallets AND at the same time they turn whole Internet into a cesspool. If you look at it globally, it's insanity.

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

#278

Post by radlad » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

xorcist wrote: post #262

I see a couple of issues with programs like this. First, if this were to take off it would move the industry to impression based pricing wholesale. Reprinted content is already on of the biggest problems today, and with this model there is obvious risk that original creators get nothing as reprinters take everything. Second, given that we can't have a monopoly on this business, a webmaster is incentivized to join eve…

I don't think any of these are problems that don't already exist with the way that ads are done.

As the article states, all Google Contributor does is buy the ad impression on the page you're visiting. One way or the other, there will be an ad impression on that page. This doesn't incentivize webmasters to put any more ads on than they already do, as far as I can tell. From their perspective, ads are working normally.

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

#279

Post by gambiter » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #261

TeMPOraL wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist. YMMV, I suppose we may be browsing different parts of the Internet, but I know content I love would mostly stay intact. From my personal and subjective experience, nearly everything that is actually worth anything on the Internet is made by unpaid volunteers for whom creating content is an end in itself, and not a way to ea…

> Topical subreddits And how is reddit funded?

https://www.reddit.com/gold

I've paid for it, personally, and I know others who do.

Yes, the ads are probably a larger portion of their income right now, but there's certainly an easy way to support them directly.

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

#280

Post by mahranch » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

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…

> I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it.

I'm not sure how you "don't buy it". It's like not buying the fact that the moon orbits the earth.

Granted, yes, there is poor content, spammy content, copyright theft, and everything in between, but that doesn't mean all the original and good content vanishes or gets nullified. It's not a zero sum game and it's not black and white. People create content and then many (if not most) hope to monetize that content somehow. The most common form of monetization is ads. Whether it's some guy's physics blog on wordpress, or someone reporting the death of a celebrity on TMZ, all that content relies on paid advertisements.

Without ways to monetize content, the internet simply wouldn't exist in its current form. I don't even know how there is a discussion on this. Sites like youtube wouldn't exist or would be incredibly tiny because what good is hosting all that video content, paying for all that bandwidth, if you can't show some ads and make some money? If you can't make money, you can't pay your hosting bill. And a subscription service just wouldn't work - if youtube tried that originally instead of ads, I doubt most of us would have even heard of youtube in this alternate ad-free reality.

And that's my point. Ads drive the internet. Without ads, the internet would probably still look like it did in 1996. Because without all that TMZ, fantasy football and facebook content, the large majority of the masses wouldn't have dove in head first. If you don't have content, you don't have users. If you don't have users, you don't have innovation. No innovation, no current internet.