Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year

Several readers sent word of research into the cost of internet content without ads. They looked at the amount of money spent on internet advertising last year in the U.K., and compared it to the number of U.K. internet users. On average, each user would have to pay about £140 ($230) to make up for the lost revenue of an ad-free internet. In a survey, 98% of consumers said they wouldn't be willing to pay that much for the ability to browse without advertisements. However, while most consumers regard ads as a necessary trade-off to keep the internet free, they will go to great lengths to avoid advertising they do not wish to see. Of those surveyed, 63 per cent said they skip online video ads 'as quickly as possible' – a figure that rises to 75 per cent for 16-24 year olds. Over a quarter of all respondents said they mute their sound and one in five scroll away from the video. 16 per cent use ad blocking software and 16 per cent open a new browser window or tab.

$230

[Anonymous Coward]

...OK...where do I sign up?

Bad Study

[visualight]

A good study would provide a description of what the internet would look like without ads. My intuition is that I'd be just fine with the only content available being content that did not seek a revenue stream. I thought the internet was better back then anyway.

It's also a pointless study because it's never going to happen. I'd guess the only reason it was done is to support the idea that ad blockers and no script are "bad". Oh wait it was conducted by an ad platform.

Re:That's it?

[Zocalo]

Adblock and no script do more to keep viruses out of your stuff than antivirus.

That's actually a very good point. I haven't had a single alert from the AV component of my security suite (software on PC, host and hardware firewalls, etc.) for longer than I can remember, and that was a false positive from an installer. Then again, I whitelist cookies, JavaScript, Flash, etc., block all ads, treat all links/files I get sent with a healthy degree of skepticism, and don't tend to visit sites usually regarded as "suspect" (compromised is another matter, of course), so even the likes of SpyBot S&D and CCleaner seldom flag anything. Given how ineffectual AV is against the latest 0-day vulnerabilites and drive-bys, I'm giving serious thought to just switching off the real-time scanner and running a manual scan every week or so for peace of mind.

Re:I'd pay for it in a heartbeat!

[Austerity Empowers]

You know, there was a day, not so long ago, when the internet worked just fine and had very few ads. The ads aren't paying for "the internet". They're paying for people to "work the internet" full time, and it's not very clear how much value they're adding. I'm sure there'd be a loss if we found an effective way of stopping ads, but I don't think it'd be that great for the parts of the internet that make the ISP fee worthwhile. Every loser with a blog and a webcam now loads his page with as many ads as he thinks he can shove down at you, ideally before you see that hte content wasn't what you thought it was, was inane, or was otherwise useless.

20 years ago you could come online and find useful information. Now even the mighty google takes some working over to get through the corporate cruft, click baiting and paid advertisements to get what you came looking for. Even if you could pay to have the ads shut off, you're basically paying ransom to a criminal who holds all the cards.

Re:$230

[gnupun]

$1,000 is way too much, because $230 is already expensive. Let's do the math:

Current CPM (cost per thousand ad impressions/views) is $3.10 [monetizepros.com]

Therefore $230 will buy you (230 x 1000) / 3 = 74193 page views / year.

And that happens to be 74193 / 365 = 203 page views / day.

Few people, other than web addicts, browse more than 200 pages / day.

Re:sure it would

[Actually, I do RTFA]

And we could still have e-comerce on the web, we could still use sites like Amazon rather than having to drive miles to get to a limited selection and pay higher prices at a local "friendly" bookstore. But somehow there would be no advertising.

The idea that Amazon, or any of e-commerce, would disappear in the absence of ads on the web is really really strange. Do you know that Amazon makes their money off selling things and content, not ads? They buy goods for lower prices then they sell them, and make money on a "markup". And the same is true of all e-commerce sites?

Like, eBay takes a cut of transactions. It doesn't show ads.