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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

#121

Post by SlashmanX »

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…

> Contributor doesn't work like an ad blocker, which makes ads just "disappear." Instead, you see a big empty block (that is apparently customizable in some way) that says "Thank you for being a contributor. The ad space is still there, it's just blank. So if half of your page used to be covered in ads, now half your page is covered in little blocks that say, "Thank you for being a contributor."

The demo images/gifs make it seem like you can make the ad space disappear. Is this achieveable by replacing the placeholder with a custom 1x1px image?

https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ (The 'or even this' image)

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

#122

Post by giltleaf »

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…

That's a really interesting reason - now I can actually justify ad blocker and not just praise affiliate and content marketing.

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

#123

Post by ars »

elorant wrote: post #51
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?

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…

> We hate shitty content creators (like Buzzfeed)

So because there are bad content creators, that means the good ones should not get paid?

I'm not quite following your logic.

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

#124

Post by dwb »

downandout wrote: post #110

The reality is that few people will do this as long as it's optional. The masses are short-sighted. For anything like this to work, a publisher needs to block the display of their content if ad-blocking is in place. They could bring up something that says "you have one of two choices: go to and pay, or disable your adblocker". If people run into this enough, they'll do one or the other.

Actually you just need to hold down the refresh button to be able to reload with content blockers temporarily disabled.

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

#125

Post by austenallred »

SlashmanX wrote: post #121
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…

> Contributor doesn't work like an ad blocker, which makes ads just "disappear." Instead, you see a big empty block (that is apparently customizable in some way) that says "Thank you for being a contributor. The ad space is still there, it's just blank. So if half of your page used to be covered in ads, now half your page is covered in little blocks that say, "Thank you for being a contributor." The demo images/gifs…

These are the options you're given in the settings: https://austen-screenshots.s3.amazonaws.com/Contributor_Pref...

I suppose you could use a 1x1 pixel as a workaround, but that seems to be more of a hack than the way Google designed it to function.

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

#128

Post by Nursie »

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 my view is that the advertiser is being ripped off - I am literally a worthless view to them. In fact for any ad that's beyond static text I am more likely to remember your brand and deliberately not buy your stuff in future.

So effectively, any site that was being supported by my visits would be scamming the advertiser.

I'm kind of OK with that, but the other benefits of adblocking (no tracking, no random scripts executing, much faster page-loading etc) far outweigh any concerns.

I know, I'm accessing your content without paying at the moment. I would be happy to put a header in my http requests that says I will not render ads, and allow you to decide if you want to serve me. Until then, I'm going to carry on freeloading, but make no mistake - if I wasn't, you would be.

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

#129

Post by btbuildem »

herojan wrote: post #41
bkanber wrote: post #16

This is fascinating. Business model: annoy people so much that they pay you to stop annoying them. Everybody's been talking about the death of display ads, and it looks like Google's paying attention and trying to figure out how to marginalize the ad itself, but still take money on the transaction. Eventually, Google could probably marginalize the ad so much that there are only a rare few display ads left online, and…

The ads aren't there purely to annoy people, they're there to support the content you'd otherwise pay for. The idea of paying them instead of getting ads is also a way to support that content.

More importantly, they're there to gather information about individual users so that the ad provider can sell that information..

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

#130

Post by ryan-c »

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…

Is there any way to unblock enough to allow contributor to work, but still block any actual ads? I'm not willing to fully unblock it unless they will promise that I will see zero ads.
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