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Welcome to the ad-free internet

economist.com

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Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#71

Post by ohdannyboy »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #63
shiroiuma wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't make up completely wrong claims to use as an analogy. The US grid doesn't run at either 110V or 220V, it's much higher. The 50/60Hz thing doesn't make any sense as an analogy either, because there's no significant advantage to either, it's just arbitrary. You really should just delete your comment if you can't come up with a decent analogy, or edit it to eliminate the analogy that makes no sense whatsoe…

Damn sorry I offended you with my stupidity. Like many people, I have a limit to the things I know. Any ideas on what might have been a decent way to phrase that analogy?

The above poster was pedantic, rude and certainly not writing for your benefit... I wouldn't waste time soliciting their opinion on anything.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#72

Post by jochem9 »

littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

Blendle in the Netherlands tried it for 5 years (2014-2019), but stopped because they couldn't make it profitable. I don't think it was the news outlets complaining, but just not enough articles sold to make the margin they needed, so internationally this still might scale (lots more work contracting publishers, of course).

Afaik Blendle is now a subscription service with a flat fee all you can read model.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#73

Post by ablation »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #63
shiroiuma wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't make up completely wrong claims to use as an analogy. The US grid doesn't run at either 110V or 220V, it's much higher. The 50/60Hz thing doesn't make any sense as an analogy either, because there's no significant advantage to either, it's just arbitrary. You really should just delete your comment if you can't come up with a decent analogy, or edit it to eliminate the analogy that makes no sense whatsoe…

Damn sorry I offended you with my stupidity. Like many people, I have a limit to the things I know. Any ideas on what might have been a decent way to phrase that analogy?

Your comment was fine. It added to the discussion, and even if the analogy wasn’t accurate, it made your point effectively to a lay audience. So I think that is a net positive. Ironically, the reply to your comment by the poster you are replying to added nothing and actually detracted from the discussion.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#74

Post by FerretFred »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #48

Doesn't this end up spiralling, though? As we've seen with Netflix, nothing stops the service from adding ads to a subscription feed. Sooner or later the pressure to grow revenues is going to force Meta to do ads on their subscription accounts (especially since they can charge a premium on those ads). Then they introduce "premium" subscription accounts with no ads, then those get ads, then there's the "excelsior" sub…

>then there's the "excelsior" subscription account with absolutely no ads

Or rather their AI will by that time have disguised ads as to be not recognisable as ads :)

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#75

Post by saghm »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #48

Doesn't this end up spiralling, though? As we've seen with Netflix, nothing stops the service from adding ads to a subscription feed. Sooner or later the pressure to grow revenues is going to force Meta to do ads on their subscription accounts (especially since they can charge a premium on those ads). Then they introduce "premium" subscription accounts with no ads, then those get ads, then there's the "excelsior" sub…

Recently I've noticed that the Uber app (which I grudgingly use instead of Lyft due to a decline in drivers over the years in various areas near where I've lived to the point where it wasn't a viable option most of the time) will show me adds when I open it to check the ETA during a ride. This is something where I'm not paying a subscription but literally paying for the ride itself, because I obviously don't check the ETA of anything when I'm not riding. I guess this is their way of trying to find a path to profitability other than self-driving cars, but I'd genuinely rather pay an extra dollar or two per ride than have an ad take up close to half my screen.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#76

Post by Log_out_ »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #48

Doesn't this end up spiralling, though? As we've seen with Netflix, nothing stops the service from adding ads to a subscription feed. Sooner or later the pressure to grow revenues is going to force Meta to do ads on their subscription accounts (especially since they can charge a premium on those ads). Then they introduce "premium" subscription accounts with no ads, then those get ads, then there's the "excelsior" sub…

There is always piracy as ground truth and I'm content with it.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#78

Post by pammf »

I’ve been using ad blockers for years now, mainly on DNS level. Last week I decided to test Apple’s private relay and for 5 minutes I had to deal with internet with ads. Disgusting experience.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#79

Post by saghm »

solardev wrote: post #36
littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

Google actually tried this... at least twice, I think? In 2011, they partnered with some publishers to offer "One Pass", a pass-through billing system that also had an option for pay-per-article: https://www.electronicpaymentsinternational.com/news/google-... Then, separately in 2012 they tried to launch "Google Wallet for content", offering publishers a way to sell individual articles for less than a dollar: https:/…

I suspect that when presented with the actual "cost" of reading an article up front, most people realize that they just don't actually care that much about reading it. When the cost is indirect (via ads) and deferred (in terms of the effects on the entire system, leading to what we have today), it's a lot easier to ignore.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#80

Post by ehnto »

littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

You have a lot of great answers here but an additional issue is payments being an unconsolidated network with high trust requirements, which adds a lot of friction to payment in aggregate if not for everyone.

I would never bother to set up an account and then payment method to make the payment of 25c in the first place. I'd be trusting my information to a news network or some random syndication shop. Most everyone will be expecting an account set up, and then be using one of dozens of payment providers. It's just a news article, which these days are closer to blog posts.

I don't exactly want one payment network to rule them all either, so in general I think that is just a currently unsolved problem.

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