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Welcome to the ad-free internet

economist.com

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Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#221

Post by _bohm »

Prickle wrote: post #123

The 5 minute airplane ad is nightmare fuel for me. How long until they kick up the brightness to wake you up. Imagine you are stuck in the window seat, forced to watch an ad you can't turn off? I am exaggerating obviously, but I do find it egregious that they would dare show more ads when ticket prices are already extremely high.

You joke but I’m pretty sure I experienced this recently on a flight. Being shown ads when you have the ability to opt out is one thing. Being shown ads when you’re a captive audience in an already relatively high stress environment seems outright villainous to me.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#222

Post by bonton89 »

solardev wrote: post #43
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card networks impose relatively high minimums - so transactions under ~$4 USD don't make it worthwhile. PayPal has their own microtransactions scheme (which is difficult to get approved for), I assume PayPal has enough clout to pull it off. The other approach: having a PAYG balance, has the problem of requiring users to pay a somewhat larger amount up-front (e.g. $5 or $10) which is off-putting to people who'v…

This doesn't seem that hard to get around, with a bunch of $0.99 games and in-app purchases on mobile stores. iTunes did it too with songs, before Spotify took over. Seems like a simple opportunity for any payment processor middleman to just batch up transactions and run them through the CC processor at the end of the day/week/month. If the middleman doesn't want to, each individual publication can still just tally u…

I thought batching like this was Patreon's main value add.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#223

Post by stef25 »

filipezf wrote: post #207

That's funny, because I'm a PAID subscriber to The Economist, and on opening the page, there is a big ad banner on the top and other on the right, filling more than half the space. (I don't bother using adblockers,though). Newspapers have always shown ads even for paying consumers. As the very article ends with: "Users who pay to block ads in some areas are still likely to find them popping up in new ones."

> I don't bother using adblockers,though

Do yourself a favor. That's really the end of this discussion.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#224

Post by stef25 »

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…

archive.is + adblocker + reader view in FF and it's just like an actual newspaper. Just text.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#225

Post by stef25 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #45
fastest963 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a space that my company operates in and we will hopefully provide this service in the future. First, publishers want more than what consumers are willing to pay per article, the credit card companies charge too much (even with special micro pricing we've negotiated) and no one has a market big enough to reasonably get $xx per month into a wallet from a massive audience. Google had tried something similar with…

Brave, the browser, started with some cryptocurrency micropayment idea. What happened to it?

Take a guess :)

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#227

Post by red_admiral »

e2le wrote: post #220
avgcorrection wrote: post #116

There’s this local newspaper. While I’m on a logged in account (EDIT: paid) the ads seem to take up at least 25% screen real estate at all times. The best ones are the ones that graciously show up while scrolling, dynamically—it’s like wathing TV (again)! My favorite place though is the gym. Which costs a lot when you just go there to use frickin’ weights and cardio equipment. LCD screens with ads running (for local…

>so that your peripheral vision gets distracted by irrelevant stimuli As this becomes increasingly more common place, I'm left wondering if there is a risk of a reduced quality of life for those with neurological issues (ADHD for example), in the worst case their exclusion from society.

If only we could get a right to use uBlock for such cases added to the ADA.

(Then sue Chrome for breaking things with manifest v3.)

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#228

Post by knallfrosch »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #210
filipezf wrote: post #207

That's funny, because I'm a PAID subscriber to The Economist, and on opening the page, there is a big ad banner on the top and other on the right, filling more than half the space. (I don't bother using adblockers,though). Newspapers have always shown ads even for paying consumers. As the very article ends with: "Users who pay to block ads in some areas are still likely to find them popping up in new ones."

As a non paying ublock origin user, I don't see any ads. The ad-free internet has already been here for a long time if you are willing to spend 10 minutes install ublock origin. Paying is actually worse, because it shows the fact that you have some amount of disposable income and are willing to pay for things, which greatly increases the value of advertising to you specifically.

I'm a subscriber with UBlock and I still get a "Give a gift" footer. And when they deliver the print magazine, there's ads (including on the back cover) AND a flyer "give a gift." Which is annoying because the flyer always drops out.

Subscribing merely turns the "Please subscribe yourself" ads into "Give the gift of knowledge to a friend."

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#229

Post by haswell »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #211

The ad-free internet has already been here for a long time if you are willing to spend 10 minutes install ublock origin. Paying is actually worse on all aspects, even if you ignore the cost, because it shows the fact that you have some amount of disposable income and are willing to pay for things, which greatly increases the value of advertising to you specifically.

While I use ublock and ad blocking DNS, this particular ad-free Internet isn’t sustainable.

For better or worse, the business model behind many of these sites rely on the ad revenue to continue existing, and ad blocking only works as long as most people still aren’t doing it.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#230

Post by ruszki »

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…

Isn’t this just inflation in a different package?
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