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Google Contributor

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Re: Google Contributor

#41

Post by username223 »

ori_b wrote: post #25
lettergram wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess (haven't researched yet) is that Google is taking a percentage, and Google needs that percentage needs to be high enough to make it worth while.

Basically, if this is the project I think it is, all they're doing is letting you act as your own advertiser, with the ad that you're running being an empty pixel pattern.

Good call. Basically, they can turn users with a PREF cookie into additional bidders for ad auctions on their network (and others, maybe?). $1-3 isn't much, but if you pool a large number of users' money, you can both drive auction prices to increase your revenue, and drive users to contribute more when their "contribution" stops removing ads.

One can never be too cynical.

Re: Google Contributor

#42

Post by koala_man »

d_j_b wrote: post #28

Google's model rests on the assumption that all the ads on the site will be Google ads, and as such this scheme comes with a fairly heavy incentive for content providers to carry Google ads only. Declaration of interest: we're trying to do something in the same space with content-that-should-be-or-is-paywalled with Financial Times articles on The Browser ( http://thebrowser.com )

If the model is that you bid on your own ad views at market value, why would it incentivize content providers to carry Google ads only?

Re: Google Contributor

#43

Post by [deleted] »

ori_b wrote: post #25
lettergram wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess (haven't researched yet) is that Google is taking a percentage, and Google needs that percentage needs to be high enough to make it worth while.

Basically, if this is the project I think it is, all they're doing is letting you act as your own advertiser, with the ad that you're running being an empty pixel pattern.

[deleted]

Re: Google Contributor

#44

Post by dikaiosune »

suyash wrote: post #39

No thanks, AdBlocker works for me Google. Asking money for reading blogs, articles etc has not worked so far for most content heavy sites.

I think there's something to be said for an ad-free content "subscription" to the whole internet. I block all ads right now but I would still get the warm and fuzzies if I knew that I was free of ads and I was still paying a little bit to the people who create content online.

Re: Google Contributor

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

dikaiosune wrote: post #40

Ideally, something like this could still contribute to the sites visited while the user has an adblocker enabled or JavaScript disabled. I would be quite happy to chip in to help sites display fewer ads, but it would be tedious to whitelist all of the participants just so they can get their contribution from my visit. In principle I am very interested in consciously supporting those who create the content I get compl…

Well, if the script would be embeddable from Google's domain, I think it would be easy to whitelist it. Of course it raises some issues with tracking. One could conceive a self-hosted version, but I'm not sure how Google would avoid scammers then, reporting "fake visits".

Re: Google Contributor

#46

Post by greedoshotlast »

Should Google be collecting this revenue for the content providers? Or could the individual content providers not collect this revenue themselves without having Google take a cut.

How hard is it for a site to setup a simple paywall linked to a low-cost payment processor?

Why work with the record label when you could be producing your own work and keep 100% of the profit?

Re: Google Contributor

#47

Post by r3bl »

So, like Flattr but instead of choosing what pages you want to contribute to you contribute to every web page that is a part of this project?

No thank you, I'll stick to Flattr.

Re: Google Contributor

#48

Post by moey »

greedoshotlast wrote: post #46

Should Google be collecting this revenue for the content providers? Or could the individual content providers not collect this revenue themselves without having Google take a cut. How hard is it for a site to setup a simple paywall linked to a low-cost payment processor? Why work with the record label when you could be producing your own work and keep 100% of the profit?

Unfortunately most payment processors hate micro-transactions. And some charge transaction fee's so it wouldn't be feasible with them.

Now bitcoins...that would work.

Re: Google Contributor

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

dpweb wrote: post #36

At the risk of being an unpopular opinion, advertising has been a huge boon in the growth of the Internet. I dislike the ad crazy "news" sites that bombard you and destroy the entire user-experience, but I would equate a not-too-intrusive advertisement as being not an obnoxious thing, and something that allows you to get something, not totally for free, but at the cost of a second of your attention. I'm sure popular…

> At the risk of being an unpopular opinion, advertising has been a huge boon in the growth of the Internet.

I believe this is true - even if annoying, or unsustainable, we owe something to the fact that people at least believe they can make money this way.

There are however two problems with ads. You touched on one of them - intrusiveness/user experience. But there is another one - many ads you see are made to trick you into spending money on something you don't need and/or sell you something suboptimal (E.g. that camera you just saw? It's probably not a good fit for you, but it's definitely the one that the vendor can make most money on selling) and/or just lie and try to scam you. The goals of advertisers and users are not aligned, and until the former stop trying to scam me, I will continue to block ads.

> Also, I would equate begging for donations and ads. I love wikipedia for instance but the donation begging can be just as obnoxious as intrusive ads.

Can't disagree with that. In case of Wikipedia, their obnoxiousness actually makes me want to not donate on purpose, and I'd probably do that if it wasn't as valuable for me as it is.

Re: Google Contributor

#50

Post by Mahn »

dpweb wrote: post #36

At the risk of being an unpopular opinion, advertising has been a huge boon in the growth of the Internet. I dislike the ad crazy "news" sites that bombard you and destroy the entire user-experience, but I would equate a not-too-intrusive advertisement as being not an obnoxious thing, and something that allows you to get something, not totally for free, but at the cost of a second of your attention. I'm sure popular…

You are looking at this from the point of view of the user (where ads are not a big deal in exchange of consuming the content for free), but step for a moment in the content creators' shoes. While Ads can still be profitable, they grow less and less efective year after year; almost every other monetization model possible is superior for an internet product nowadays. You can easily run a blog with millions of hits per month and still not make enough to work on it full time. It's shitty if you are the content creator and can only monetize via ads.
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