Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year 611
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
...OK...where do I sign up?
Re:$230 (Score:5, Insightful)
...OK...where do I sign up?
You can sign up for our flat rate Gold Plan at $1000, or the Silver Plan where we will nickel and dime you until you pay $2010 per year, or the Bronze Plan where you will get some carefully selected ads in return for a lower fee of $500.
This service brought to you by your trustworthy ISP.
Notes: (1) You may occasionally see ads, (2) Ads you don't see will still count against your bandwidth cap, (3) We hate you.
Re:$230 (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not the big bad ISPs who generally do the ads (though they do sometimes participate on the side with DNS shenanigans). Its the people making the content you like.
Got a youtube channel you like with annoying ads? Dont blame the nasty corporations, blame the channel operator who chose what types of ads you received.
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Its not the big bad ISPs who generally do the ads (though they do sometimes participate on the side with DNS shenanigans). Its the people making the content you like.
Got a youtube channel you like with annoying ads? Dont blame the nasty corporations, blame the channel operator who chose what types of ads you received.
From what I can tell, youtube doesn't seem to do non-annoying ads, so the channels have to choose between "annoying" and "none".
TBH I find the youtube ads so intrusive that I do block them. I don't feel particularly bad about this because I figure that if the channels are particularly hurting from the blockers they can go shift their channel to another website that has more sensible advertising policies.
(Really - I wouldn't mind seeing the youtube preroll ads if I was watching an hour video, but when I'm w
Re:$230 (Score:5, Informative)
Totally with you. FWIW, YouTube offered to let me "monetize" my videos - I assume by showing annoying ads - but I've declined because I hate YouTube ads so much, and also because it'd probably net me a whopping $0.05/year.
Anyway, I created a toolbar bookmark in all my browsers with the following in the URL field:
javascript:window.location=String(window.location).replace("watch?v=","v/");
If you click it while watching a video on YouTube, it causes the video to fill your browser window (for better resizing control, also to get [nearly] full-screen Flash in Linux), but also has the unintended but welcome side effect that it skips the preroll adds. Obviously this won't work if the "v" parameter in the URL doesn't come first, but that's rare enough that doing it by hand isn't a nuisance.
Re:$230 (Score:5, Informative)
Occasionally jars me when I see people complaining about how horrible YouTube ads are and it reminds me "oh yeeeaaah.."
Re:$230 (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding? $1000? $230??
I just installed Adblock Edge. Fuck ads.
I'll be willing to pay Adblock $5 a year for a 99% adfree experience & screw the lot of them.
Re:$230 (Score:4, Insightful)
How much stuff have you bought due to ads? Zero here. I usually get ads for places I just shopped at, which is really closing the barn door after the cows have left, and often results in me thinking twice about going there again.
I'm convinced that ad based funding is a bubble waiting to pop. I would be very interested to see the analytics supporting the notion that people were clicking enough ads (or influenced by the ads) in Flappy Birds to support the 50k/day payout the author was getting (and that was just his cut).
I pay for Hulu, and I wish there was a slightly higher cost ad free option.
I'd also be open to paying $20/month for a completely ad free internet where the ISP's and content providers figured out some miraculous revenue sharing agreement (good luck with that).
My problem with the current pay-wall route is that too many places have just a few articles I want to read occasionally, nut they want to do yearly subscriptions, which is a no-go for the amount of stuff I want.
As a result I do ad-block, and also avoid a lot of sites. Mandatory video ads almost always makes me leave. I almost never watch anything on youtube anymore.
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I would be very interested to see the analytics supporting the notion that people were clicking enough ads
Its trivial to track for a webmaster ... You can waste money on ads, but figuring out ... how well they are working and how much money you are making as a result of ad clickthroughs has been a solved problem
I think that the GP in his post as a whole was talking about the wider picture, not just whether a Webmaster was making money by click-throughs. The wider picture is whether people actually buy stuff even if they do click through.
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$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:$230 (Score:5, Funny)
Few people, other than web addicts, browse more than 200 pages / day.
Hello. My name is Dunkirk, and I have a problem.
Bandwidth (Score:3)
(2) Ads you don't see will still count against your bandwidth cap,
Actually, given the prices practised by some ISP, if this number is correct
ads cost you, the end user, *MORE MONEY* (in terms of bandwidth, specially the "video" kind of ads) than earn money back to the ad-supported website.
And then you wonder why I prefer using Adblock/Noscript, etc. and donating a few bucks (bitcoin,etc.) to website I like the most.
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I think some sites should try direct sponsorships with a single or a few corporations. Load their banner, use their colors, and merge it with the site desi
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That will get you a "TL;DR" from the PHB. Just say "synergy".
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Did you ever get woke up in the middle of the night because your computer is playing an advertisement? Slashdot is a big offender in this regard. Leave your computer on with an active browser with slashdot on one of the tabs. It does not even need to be the active tab either. It use to be that one had to allow the audio to start but now the audio will start even if one does not do anything to show any interest in the product. It is so bad that chrome will show a speaker on the tab where the audio is co
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I have some sites manually blocked on my NAT router, but again, it's a keeping-up-with-updates issue.
Adblock runs seamlessly. Some websites complain but not most.
Re:$230 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is your computer on and browsing, with the speakers on, in the middle of the night when you're not using it?
If you're going to do this, you deserve all you get. Along with what it does to your bandwidth and electricity bill.
I deserve what I earn (Score:3)
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Slashdot has ads? Oh.. wait.. Yep.. Adblock is on. Wow, when did Slashdot start with the ads?
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$230 per website that you use + you still need to your ISP the costs of running the local system that get's you on line. also I see that you have basic TV for $50 more a year for 1 year you can get our triple play plan with faster downloads + 1 year free HBO + hardware rent fees. and for only $70 more for 1 year X1 dvr, extreme 105, HBO and MAX. Come on you want faster internet and more tv right?
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it's not the ads it's the surveillance. (Score:5, Insightful)
it's the surveillance I don't like. In theory this surveillance is supposed to get me relevant ads but it just creeps me out with it's persistence. I don't really need relevant ads ever. What I actually like is being exposed to lots of different ads. It gives me a sense of what the world is up to in a way. SO I don't mind the ads. It's not like TV ads that I have to wait through. they are just off to the side. What I don't want therefore is the surveillance. it has negative value to me. I don't want targeted ads.
If I could be sure I could be surveillance free I'd pay $230. But I don't see how that is possible. How would I know? where does one draw the line-- things like cookies for sessions and autologin on returning to a site and resuming my netflix movie where I left off are useful. What about amazon auto suggest? I once bought a book on amazon about sexual practices in different cultures and for months I had autosuggests for dildos and some amazingly raunchy bondage movies that I had no idea amazon carried. My sense of embarrassment prevented me from using amazon when other people were in the room. I think however this is not really the surveillance I am worried about. I can easily not use amazon and certainly in the future I always now check the "people who bought this also bought..." before I purchase some item that will trigger things I don't want it suggesting to me. SO that's containable.
But that experience makes me wonder what that little search did for my google profile. Am I now pegged as a dog fucker on google because the key terms I used for a scholarly search had other meanings? I know that google pricks up it's ears when a search leads down a path to a purchase.
You might ask why do I care. I just do, and that's normal. were trained in caring about appearances when were on the playground.
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...OK...where do I sign up?
Well yes, I'd probably sign up too. However, I imagine this would work more like cable/satellite:
1. Look at all this great stuff you can get *with no ads*! All you have to do is pay a subscription fee!
2. I've got a great idea! We could make stacks of money if we put advertising on the subscription channels as well as charging a subscription fee!
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but noscript does. ADblock + NoScript + Flashblock = no ads at all.
Re:$230 (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's also DuckDuckGo.com [duckduckgo.com]. Despite the name, it's actually quite decent, and the "related" non-boolean search lands on top.
The difference is, DuckDuckGo is headquartered in Paoli, Pennsylvania. You have to dig through their site a while to find that; try the Hiring section. That means they are subject to US fed/state data retention laws and government requests.
Ixquick is headquartered in The Netherlands and (understandably) boasts about not having provided one byte of data to the US government. They've won EU awards because those governments actually recognize the value of privacy. Please see this page [ixquick.com] for a reference.
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Don't get me wrong, DuckDuckGo sounds good. Sounds like they certainly don't actively track you. But I don't see them bragging that they "keep no data to hand over in the first place"
They don't use tracking cookies (their preferences cookies are not identifying, they're just a string of your options, if you've set them), so the most data that they can have for identifying you is the IP address. They've been SSL by default (redirecting from http to https and defaulting to https in search results where available, for example on Wikipedia) for a long time, so you don't suddenly jump into an unencrypted connection as soon as you leave.
It sounds much better than any other US-based search engine I'm aware of. But my own preference doesn't even log an IP address since 2009. You can also bookmark a URL generated with your preferences so there is no need to accept even preference cookies from them (and preferences include options like using POST instead of GET so search terms stay out of other sites' logs). And the aforementioned deal about being outside US jurisdiction is nice too.
DuckDuckGo also does not appear to offer to act as your
Re:$230 (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing built into Firefox these days is a large integer and a constantly morphing UI.
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except a lot of places now won't roll the video if the ad is also blocked.
That's it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that cable modems are $50 a month for capped services. Another 30% higher is nothing.
Considering that more viruses are transmitted by ads now than on their own it gets even scarier. Adblock and no script do more to keep viruses out of your stuff than antivirus.
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Re:That's it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The current free-market system with sites supported by ads isn't perfect, but it's like democracy - Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
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This is it in a nutshell, it's a bottom-up approach rather than top-down.
And it's not really Democracy, it's Capitalism. Literally, what's it wort
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Even worse, how is the money distributed? Who determines the "worth" of a web site or other online resource, and then allocates them their cut?
The current free-market system with sites supported by ads isn't perfect, but it's like democracy - Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
One can imagine (but probably not implement) a system where an ISP would maintain a "client access system" that signaled to compatible web sites that the user was willing to pay for content services. The signal would provide how much the user is willing to pay (to allow for ISPs to maintain different tiers) and the web site would, in return, defer ads and other annoyances for users who were willing to pay enough. Leave it up to the sites to say how much that threshold is, and leave it up to the ISPs to se
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Who determines the "worth" of a web site or other online resource, and then allocates them their cut?
Easy, take the amount of cat videos on each and every web site and then divide the money even... wait a second, google would get nearly all of it... on the other hand, best to just give it all to them and let them rule, can't be worse than any government (in any country you could pick).
Re:That's it? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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This was a uk study - we get phone, unlimited fibre and unlimited calls for about $60/m. Why would I pay more to avoid the adverts I already block?
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Why would I pay more to avoid the adverts I already block?
So that you can continue to use the web as more sites deploy ad-blocker blockers.
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Considering that dial-up modems are self-capping I would love to avoid the ads.
I'd pay for it in a heartbeat! (Score:2)
Re:I'd pay for it in a heartbeat! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
A large portion of that ad revenue is going to sites that don't really provide any kind of value, but are spammy SEO deals. The best part of an internet with no advertising revenue (or at least a lot less of it) would be precisely that all these content farms would not be able to replace that revenue, and would hopefully go away.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do I sign up?
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No actual content of value would be lost (although some might only continue to exist in the Wayback Machine)
Until the subscription sites put up a robots.txt file to instruct the Wayback Machine to refuse to deliver already-archived content. For other archives that don't honor robots.txt retrospectively, a subscription site could send a notice of claimed infringement under OCILLA.
sure it would (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea, all of the spam would just go away. And I wouldn't have any more spam show up in my email, right?
And all of that drive-by malware installing stuff would just go away and people would start being ice to each other, right?
Of course, all of our interactivity would still be there. 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. And people would just automatically know where all of the new e-comerce sites were. And there would be no one who wanted to steal your identity and your credit card info and drain your bank account. And best of all, no one would ever see a bunch of fools saying "ad free Internet for $230 a year sounds good to me, where do I sign up?" and try to take advantage of that.
We don't even have ad-free PBS television any more, but some people want to believe they could get ad-free Internet so much that they would OK an additional yearly charge?
--
You're not going to get ad-free Internet. But if you really care about it at all you can get greatly ad-reduced Internet. And it doesn't involve a yearly fee, just a small expenditure of effort. Block the major ad sources in your Hosts file (or, even better for the more advanced user, set up a network wide block in your router). But be aware, this has the side effect of making your browsing a lot faster, since you cut out a lot of unwanted traffic.
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Re:sure it would (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
heh (Score:2)
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We've noticed that you have an Ad Blocker, as we're depending on advertisement revenue to provide you with free services - we will kindly ask you to turn your Ad Blocker off and reload the page to see your content.
PHASE 2: We need to get Google and other search major engines to identify sites that degrade experience for users running Adblockers, which is basically just a new form of cloaking, and either display a warning or demote them in search results.
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google hurt advertising?
that will be the day
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on many sites you'll be met with messages such as: We've noticed that you have an Ad Blocker, as we're depending on advertisement revenue to provide you with free services - we will kindly ask you to turn your Ad Blocker off and reload the page to see your content.
If they don't want me to see their content, I'm happy to oblige. On the other hand, if I know the site's content is worth it and the ads aren't too obtrusive, I might turn it off.
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If they don't want me to see their content, I'm happy to oblige. On the other hand, if I know the site's content is worth it and the ads aren't too obtrusive, I might turn it off.
This! A good example is slashdot - I don't check the box that offers me the chance to view it ad-free. It's not like the early days of the internet when we were stuck with 56k dialup modems and ads made the page take way longer to load.
Similarly, I like reading BOfH, and I'm not going to complain about seeing a few ads that help pay for it. In my mind, it's a fair trade-off.
As for those sites (like one of my local newspapers) that keep popping up demands that I subscribe to their digital content serv
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Very rare to never actually. In a tug of war between list maintainers and advertisers, adblock definitely has the upper hand and had it for years.
Sometimes either situation you describe happens, but that is usually fixed in days, and then takes weeks to change again.
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We probably visit wildly different kinds of web pages, as I can't remember when I last had any trouble because of Ablock+. Some pages have notices asking you to whitelist, but the main content isn't hidden.
FWIW, I subscribe to EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy's Social Blocking List and Adblock Warning Removal List.
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We probably visit wildly different kinds of web pages, as I can't remember when I last had any trouble because of Ablock+. Some pages have notices asking you to whitelist, but the main content isn't hidden.
FWIW, I subscribe to EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy's Social Blocking List and Adblock Warning Removal List.
We probably do, I usually read the local newspapers online, plus the state wide newspapers...and the "free" tv-channels (also called PLAY channels) online, they all will notify you when you're turning Ad Blocker on. But hey...different worlds, right!?
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Local newspapers are the worst. My local newspaper give you ten free page views based on ip number and then locks you out.
I just get my news from other sources. Sooner or later they will go bankrupt. You can only pay the CEO millions o dollars a year for doing nothing for so long.
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I've seen that "AdBlock detected" warning quite a few times. Problem is, I don't even use AdBlock. I don't know how they try to detect it but they're failing.
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NoScript takes care of most of those who get around Adblock. If ads still show up then I'm happy to let them pass since my primary reason for using Adblock is protection from javascript exploits and excessive bandwidth consumption from all the cross site scripts they invoke + auto-playing videos.
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The obvious solution here is to load the ad but to block its display.
Which removes most of the benefit of ad blockers to people stuck behind cellular or satellite Internet with its 5 to 10 GB/mo cap.
Bad Study (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The thing is, companies will normally go the route that will maximize profit.
So if you were to pay the $230 for the Add free internet. Then how will that money be distributed. Per click, length of time on the page, the amount of data transferred to your system?
Depending how the content providers will get paid for their pages, they will modify their pages for maximum profit. Either making a lot of small pages (presentation) to maximize the clicks. Or make a long winded stories to maximize the time spend on
How would the money be split? What's the incentive (Score:2)
OK, so everyone pays $230... how do they pay the websites that you visit? What represents ads? One could argue that www.apple.com is one giant ad for Apple products, right?
It did just fine before ads (Score:5, Insightful)
$230 isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that such a state of affairs is impossible. If people actually started paying for subscriptions, the ads would disappear only temporarily. Eventually companies would realize "Sure, they're paying subscription fees, but if I just put a little unobtrusive link to 'related products' in the sidebar, no on will complain. And, yeah, sure, I'll get a little extra money on the side for displaying links to specific (paying) partners..." Soon enough, the ads are back (in some form or other), and we're now paying for the content twice. (We've seen this happen many times before; e.g. subscription cable-TV was supposed to be ad-free. More recently I've noticed that digital downloads from iTunes or Google Play have ads for other shows added to the beginning.) Moreover, oftentimes 'ad-free' really just means the ads are less obvious but more insidious (product placement, 'trusted' reviewers being bribed to give positive reviews, etc.).
The simple fact is that we cannot ever trust companies to actually honor the social contract of subscription models. Since they cannot stick to the rules, the only option is for end-users endure the constant ads, since at least in this case we don't have to pay subscription costs.
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The simple fact is that we cannot ever trust companies to actually honor the social contract of subscription models. Since they cannot stick to the rules, the only option is for end-users endure the constant ads, since at least in this case we don't have to pay subscription costs.
Very true, and this has already been proven, here in Scandinavia - we are so "LUCKY" that we can Opt-Out of getting ads in the mail (we're talking snail-mail here), this would require a trip to the Post Office, and filling out some forms and finally...put a sticker on the good old mail box that says "No Ads please!".
...now privatized...Postal Services) fig
While most companies respect that (because they're required by LAW to do this and risk hefty fines if they don't), they have (together WITH the actual
Stealing attention (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest problem with ads is they are designed to steal your attention from the content. I've mentioned this numerous times whenever a website starts crying about Adblocking. If you want me to read your content, don't put full motion video ads on the side right next to the content I'm trying to read. Don't make 2/3rds of the page giant clickable area to redirect me to your sponsor. I'm not visiting your site to see the ads, I'm there for the content that you put so much work into. Ads are typically designed to steal your attention and be obtrusive. Slashdot's ads are pretty much safe, even though I even have the option to disable ads here.
I don't recall who it was but one big site posted a editorial on why they think Adblock is bullshit. It was the same day they had full page sponsorship and basically clicking anywhere that had empty space would direct you to that sponsor and they had every kind of obnoxious ad possible on the site at the same time. If everybody was sensible about ads then I wouldn't use an adblock, I do have the option enabled to allow unobtrusive ads so at least I'm not that big of a dirtbag.
Basically the internet is turning into Idiocracy more and more every day. Animated ads all around and some times with in the content you're trying to read. NOW GO AWAY IM BAITIN.
I'd pay it but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you had the option to pay this, there would still be ads, because greed cannot be satisfied. See: cable TV.
A quick couple of things wrong with the study... (Score:4, Informative)
.
2) it did not take into account the costs associated with the malware distributed by the various ad platforms.
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2) it did not take into account the costs associated with the malware distributed by the various ad platforms.
That's not covered by the fee you paid to run Windows?
Ads not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
People already pay for their internet connection, bandwith, web hosting, etc. Maybe the Telegraph could not exist on the web without ads, but that does not mean the internet could not exist. This person seems to belive that the internet exists only because of commercial content producers.
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Tolerable With Limits (Score:3)
Assumptions (Score:2)
That assumes that anyone would want to subsidize every single site that receives ad revenue. I strongly suspect that this is not the case. But even at only $230 a year, that would be a bargain. The viruses, the flash ads, the spam. God, make it all go away please.
But it will not. They want brand awareness, not just click-throughs. Paying it would be rather like paying the danegeld. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
Zero sum (Score:2)
Total number of websites (Score:2)
I don't actually browse the entire internet and have no interest in guaranteeing equivalent revenue to everyone selling penis enlargements. My share of the burden is only a dozen or so websites visited regular. But since many of those are content aggregators let's go ahead and say I visit 100 x that many websites, and consider these casual visits as equal to supporting the website for an entire year.
This makes $230 / 1,036,878,123 websites (internetlivestats.com) * 1200 = 2.7*e-4 dollars to cover my webs
That model really helped Cable TV (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't know when and where it was that you had "ad free" cable TV, but cable TV was originally (in the '70s and earlier in the US) for people who didn't want to put up an antenna and mess with it to get a good picture for local channels (with the commercials intact). Then around 1980 or so, my family got hooked up to a cable TV system that wasn't just an antenna redistributor, and had cable-only channels. I was surprised to find that most of the channels had commercials. So at least in the US, ads on cable
That's a real nice Internets you got there... (Score:3)
Shame if someone smeared it all up with advertisements...
Tell you what - for the low low fee of 230 dollars a year, I promise Guido and Nunzio here won't fill your windows up with popups.
No Ads = No Tracking? (Score:2)
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What would possibly happen (Score:3)
What would possibly happen is that they will charge you $250 (+20 for various fees), and then still find a way to incorporate ads in the future. Remember how cable subscription you already pay for includes ads in the programming? In fact it already started, even large news outlets are including "adveterials" (sponsored stories), which are even worse than ads (it takes a second to realize they are not in fact real editorial content).
Bring it on (Score:4, Insightful)
Advertising is pissing on your brain through your eye sockets.
Bring on the advertising-free web. The signal-to-noise ratio will improve tremendously.
It's not possible (Score:2)
As soon as you would try to make such a model, everyone would come, create some alibi website and tell the world, he needs one dollar of your 230 USD per year. If there is money, people get greedy.
to make up for the lost revenue (Score:3)
This sounds crazy, I hope someone realizes that. "Lost revenue" in a businness which only has any revenue at all, because soeone somewhere thought that choking the Internet in a tide of ads must be a good businness model... "Losing" that "revenue" would be lost to those companies who built on this idiotic assumption, also this businness is one of those who drive the whole web into sh*t in the long run.The Internet would function fine, their only problem is that they've grown used to the high revenue stream and reducing or losing it would hurt them. But saying that they couldn't live with a reduced ad revenue and they'd need to push all that revenue's source onto customers to survive is also idiotic - who says they need to have the level of revenue they actually have, or that they actually need to survive at all?
Now, how much are ads costing us? (Score:4, Informative)
Just $20 a month? And that's from someone biased towards it?
Anyway, now let's see a study of how much advertising has cost each of us from:
- clicking, scrolling, and squinting for the actual content
- giving up, quitting, clicking back, and missing something
- buying, setting up, and using antivirus and adblocking software
- buying some of the frivolous things advertised, after at last being worn down by it, even a bit
- waiting for the page to load
- waiting for computer to run at all, given the heavy load some of our protective software puts on our computers
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Be careful what you wish for; I'm sure the ISPs would love to be able to collect tithes from users and redistribute them to all of the eligible sites that you visit. And then plaster you with ads anyway.
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Use links,lynx web browsers. What ads!
Been there, done that. I doesn't work quite so simple. While Lynx doesn't show the graphical content, it many times fail to filter out the code used to display the ads, and it includes the links anyway - so you'll have to fight endless links and navigate trough lots of garbage just to read a little content.
Accessibility (Score:2)
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But it's never going to happen. It's impossible to coordinate.
And, another one word reason: Google.
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Amen! This is one of my biggest pet peeves in modern journalism. It's so common that I actually get excited when I see someone use "percent" correctly!
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I think it more likely points to the fact that the advertising industry is completely out of touch with reality. People buy products regardless of if any advertising occurs or not, some things people just have to have, some things people want and research before buying, some things are impulse buys when they walk by them.
Thing is, even if you didn't follow any advertising to find a product or service, you still pay for the advertising of that product or service when you purchase it. The tagline has always b
or we'll have more (Score:2)
How to pay writers? (Score:2)
If the web site owners can't afford their own sites, then it is their own fault
Which raises a question: How do you expect any web site owner to afford his own site?
We already pay an ISP for having access to the web...
So from what source of revenue should a site's writers be paid?
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you end up having no reliable sources
Communication is a basic human need and people like to communicate even if there's no monetary reward.
People also like to spread hoaxes, whether knowingly or unknowingly. That's why I specifically mentioned reliable sources, those "with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."
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