Thanks for the kind reply, I appreciate it. I do think that's the kind of mindset that adblockers are inculcating in people - they don't quite realise the extent of all the costs that are borne by everyone else. Perhaps especially so because the sort of person who uses an adblocker is probably the sort of person who can't imagine himself clicking an ad, and so underestimates the amount of revenue made from ads. And thus also likely underestimates all the costs which that revenue pays for. (And then you end up in a predicament like the very-self-aware fellow in the other subthread, insisting that Google and YouTube and Facebook could be run by non-profits, and 'it would all work out fine'.)
As for alternative funding models - which is definitely a much more interesting conversation - I actually considered starting a company in exactly that space. I have some experience in fintech ("very credentialised" according to my former Anglo-German lead investor, haha) and so I thought I could pull it off. I couldn't, and it didn't get past the MVP stage ... luckily. The trouble is that people aren't willing to pay even the $0.01 to access an article. There's something deep in people's brains which is averse to spending money, no matter how small the amount.
I believe - and this is more second-hand evidence from other founders rather than first-hand - that the approaches which typically see the most success are those where people 'top up' a certain amount and then spend it gradually. That doesn't set off the same psychological alarm that directly spending money does. However, that kind of approach would be much harder to implement - especially as something like a browser protocol - because it would require holding probably-vast sums of money in escrow[0], which is an extremely burdensome legal and regulatory position to be in.
Personally I think Brave - much as it's a stupid company started by a stupid clever man - might be onto the right big idea here (despite getting a million little things wrong, and alienating virtually all of its users and most of its non-users too). The core idea of buying attention tokens which are paid out to websites to which you pay attention is a brilliant one. However, it needs a lot more refining, since the crude version of that model is not particularly well-equipped to deal with the difference between e.g. a movie-streaming site, on the one hand, and a shorthand news site, or even a site like Twitter, on the other hand. I may well watch a movie for 180 minutes but get less value from it than I do a tweet. So attention != value, or at least the concept of 'attention' needs refining to be more than simply 'time I spend on a website', but there's a promising kernel there, I think.
[0] Compare it to Starbucks's gift card program. Starbucks is one of the largest commercial debtors in the world just by virtue of the vast number of Starbucks gift cards in people's drawers. These things add up quickly and bigly.
You make a very good point about adblockers having that negative second-order effect where they continue to let people have the expectation of getting things that are intrinsically expensive (storage, bandwidth, sysadmins) for free - I didn't think about that before.
As for alternative funding models - why not microtransactions? Attaching an explicit price tag onto website access (subscription model) or individual media/document objects (standard "pay for what you use" model) would have some other beneficial effects, such as reducing extraneous media consumption (mindlessly scrolling for hours suddenly starts costing you money, better to buy a book and get value out of it) - most advertisements are a mental cancer that we should try to get rid of anyway.
This sounds very reasonable on paper. The elephant in the room, however, is that most people and even those who claim to want to move past ads don't want to pay that much for what they consume. The barrier between consuming something for free and paying even a tiny sum towards supporting the author is an enormous psychological chasm. The internet would definitely be much more restricted if the ad-financing model was not doable. There would be less crap as per Sturgeon's law, but the good parts would shrivel up too.
The case of HN is particularly enlightening because the community is very hostile to ads and for the most part has the technical ability to avoid them with a higher degree of sophistication than just installing Ublock. But there is also the majority of the focus and admiration placed on SWEs and companies that are directly and indirectly tied to the ad ecosystem. The energy given off is similar to McDonald's executives yelling at their children if they see them with a processed patty in hand.
Your money is also a data sequence on the internet, but you might miss it if it were gone.
I don't necessarily see a problem with looking at things this way, but the end result is that we have extremely powerful adtech companies, the deterioration of journalism (not that it was great to begin with), predatory business models, an attention economy, harder lives for artists, otherwise great projects killed, etc.
I'm aware that this was all inevitable, and I am pretty stingy myself when it comes to online material, but my point is that there is a cost to pay at the macro level. By definition, if you enjoy a type of material and aren't paying for it and use adblocking software, someone else is paying for it, whether it's the creator themselves or some overarching entity or some other aficionado. If you want to freeload in a way that is unsustainable if everyone does it, whilst enjoying a great diversity of material, that's unfortunate.
On a more positive note, I'd say donation systems such as Kickstarter or Patreon or Substack have come a long way
Now it's not that those are the only two conceivable options, it's that those are the only two options that are reasonably successful at scale.
I'm sure you could think up a donation system, or do something similar to what the Brave browser does, but those do not scale. Of course if you have some alternative approaches that work and produce viable business models, it would be great to hear them.
My use of an adblocker is not an "approach" to the problem. My suggested approach is to find a sustainable business model, which could keep them in business.
The business model is their problem - not mine. Even if I'm the cause of why their business model is failing, it's not my problem to solve.
Companies with better business models will eventually replace the companies that go out of business. If an ad-supported site goes offline, I do not care. A site with similar content and a more sustainable business model will replace them. If their content was valued enough - a donation funded site will replace it.
When ad blocking becomes prevalent and successful enough, it is the hope that ad funded sites evolve or die. Large parts of the web becoming barren is an opportunity, not a problem. Unless you are invested (personally or financially), but I'm not going to help defend your investments. If Facebook or other big player went bankrupt it would be a gold rush (which isn't going to happen; they would evolve). If we end up with something worse, we repeat the procedure until we end up with an Internet we want rather than one we merely suffer.
I can't really see technical solutions working. It is throwing money after people who have chosen not to be customers. Paywalls just mean we go elsewhere. If I have reached the point of installing an ad blocker and I notice the ads on your site, I go elsewhere. And the more people going Elsewhere, the more profitable it is to be that Elsewhere. Or maybe elsewhere is run by enthusiasts or interested parties or some non-profit model.
It is interesting how the vast majority of the Internet is assumed to be ad funded. Do we want or need this part of the Internet? Company web sites, the banks, the universities, non-profits, the politicians, the individuals, online shopping, would all still be there without ads. Lots of existing paid services would still be there, and possibly become huge as the cost of their competition stops being 'free'. Ads stopped funding blogs long ago, replaced by subscriptions and Patreon.
I work for a midlevel publisher. Nearly of our content is syndicated, with very nearly none if it being unique. Our value -add is our selectivity, and great on-site user experience when it comes to filtering and subscriptions.
20% of our readers use adblock. For video content which is a mere fraction of our site, that comes out to $700 a day in bandwidth costs going to adblock users, or $21,000 in the average month. That's a lot.
What publisher wouldn't fall over themselves to get 20% more profits in a given year?
In the last year, we grew approximately 20% but our % of adblock users soared so while costs are up, revenue is flat. This isn't a sustainable situation. I have a lot of sympathy for people who do not want to see intrsuive advertisement, and I myself feel the same way sometimes, but when it comes down to sheer costs---we can't afford to subsidize adblock users.
I'm unconviced that adblock users add more value that they take away. Since we know how many of them they are, and how much they cost, we can ask is $21,000 better spent subsizing adblock user who may tell their friends about our site, or is it better spent on traditional advertising? I think that people do follow word-of-mouth better than traditional ads, but that also means the friends of adblock users are more likely to be adblock users themselves---thus just an additional cost ontop of one we can't handle already.
Subscriptions are a terrible fit for the bulk of the web, and inhibit one of its signal advantages over other media (free-flow via hyperlinks between pages relevant to one's current purpose). I'd go as far as to say they are anti-web; entirely the wrong funding model.
Ads are from my perspective a disaster from too many angles to list here.
In short we don't have the right funding model available yet. Ads just prop up a poor one, making it possible to appear vaguely viable. So I think the more ad blockers spread, undermining the online ad industry, the better.
I'd be more convincing no doubt if I had the right alternative model at my fingers, but if I did I would probably be working on it not writing it up in HN. Micropayments of some sort seems to be the last man standing, but which and how and by who?
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I tend to agree with the core of what you're saying: that advertising has enabled, and should continue to be a main driver of, the creation of content on the internet. There's really no way to argue with that, and I don't think ads will ever go away entirely.
I also agree that things and content cost money to make. The truth is, in the US, the average ad block rate is currently 20%. That means a lot of content creators struggle to get enough money from ads, often leading them to create worse experiences (more ads, more aggressive ads) or more content (to get more eyeballs).
Our intention is to create an alternative to ad blockers that provides a sustainable option for websites and users. Specifically, we are trying to create a model that does not solely reward websites for attracting the most viewers or eyeballs, but rather incentivizes the creation and distribution of valuable content.
As someone who worked in an advertising-industry startup for 2 years before questioning what I was doing, I agree with everything you've said (in your linked post too), and sorry to see you're getting downvoted.
The project I subsequently started operates on a very simple $5/mo pausable subscription with a 30-day free trial. I'm _much_ happier with this model than anything I've ever worked on which is ad-based - it feels like a completely fair and fulfilling exchange of value.
I, too, feel like if the web was free from advertising, and instead was home to services supported by paying customers and/or donations, it would be a much better place and have far-reaching benefits. This is something I genuinely want to make a difference on, so feel free to get in touch if you want to see if we can combine our efforts in some way (contact details in profile).
Are you that impressionable that you run out to buy every little thing that is shown to you? How do you propose that journalism, creative works, and other medias that are heavily supported by ads exist?
Pretty much everyone in this thread says they won't do payment, will block ads, and seemingly has a problem with people earning a living who aren't software developers or startup owners.
But what do you see as the alternative for funding sites? The site we're on is funded by (declarative, non-personalized, non-obtrusive) ads. I would rather have ads than paywalls.
Ads suck. I block them universally. I understand the desire to “get back at the man”, and I don’t begrudge anyone for doing so. But we have to ask ourselves, what’s the real path forward, away from ads?
If a different model existed where users could pay for sites, I’m confident some would use it. I’m also confident many more would not use it. I expect a lot of users unwittingly want to be able to browse the web ad-free, for free, subsidized by the tech-illiterate and those too lazy to block ads.
We desperately need a better model for funding the internet. I’m aware of the work Brave did, but it doesn’t solve the problem of the internet being funded by ads. It instead brings users into the loop. Donations might work, and the “ad-free” subscription tier products seem sustainable. However, at scale, paying to waive ads on an individual site-by-site basis seems absurd.
Well, I agree. That's what I meant to say when I referred to the cultural reason; since free alternatives always appear, people always expect a good free version to be available, and are even more hesitant to pay. However, I don't think that's a good place for us to be.
Firstly, it remains to be seen whether it's technically sustainable; if ad blockers continue to become more mainstream and more sophisticated, ads will start bringing in less and less money. Secondly, I think that many non-ad-blocking users are making a poor choice when they choose an ad-supported free version, because it's very hard to evaluate the costs to you of having ads on content. It puts a mental burden on you, wastes your time, and may (invisibly to you) cause you to make poor purchasing decisions later. Those are all real costs, but it's impossible for you to put a dollar value on them.
Seeing an accurate valuation of your product is a bitter pill to swallow if you are accustomed to an inflated market. I don't think it is a business model problem and changing your monetization strategy won't help you much unless you can convince your customers about the (perceived) quality of your content. I don't think adblock shaming is very effective here. There are many many sites without adverts doing just fine, even receiving donations and volunteer work.
Maybe. The catch-22 of this is that subscription models more-or-less can't work while ad-based business models exist. If someone can profit by taking your paywalled content, slapping ads on it, and putting that up on a free site, then someone will do that, destroying your business model.
We need to destroy ads as a viable business model before we can even try exploring other models. Installing an ad blocker is ethical.
This is exactly what I've been thinking about re:the recent slew of adblock news on HN. Content creation and distribution have real costs, and I see other, far more intrusive models developing to combat loss of ad revenue if ad blockers become the norm.
Not to mention the contribution to rising income inequality/decreasing social mobility. If all useful information is behind a paywall, only those that can afford it will have access - further increasing the return to capital.
As for alternative funding models - which is definitely a much more interesting conversation - I actually considered starting a company in exactly that space. I have some experience in fintech ("very credentialised" according to my former Anglo-German lead investor, haha) and so I thought I could pull it off. I couldn't, and it didn't get past the MVP stage ... luckily. The trouble is that people aren't willing to pay even the $0.01 to access an article. There's something deep in people's brains which is averse to spending money, no matter how small the amount.
I believe - and this is more second-hand evidence from other founders rather than first-hand - that the approaches which typically see the most success are those where people 'top up' a certain amount and then spend it gradually. That doesn't set off the same psychological alarm that directly spending money does. However, that kind of approach would be much harder to implement - especially as something like a browser protocol - because it would require holding probably-vast sums of money in escrow[0], which is an extremely burdensome legal and regulatory position to be in.
Personally I think Brave - much as it's a stupid company started by a stupid clever man - might be onto the right big idea here (despite getting a million little things wrong, and alienating virtually all of its users and most of its non-users too). The core idea of buying attention tokens which are paid out to websites to which you pay attention is a brilliant one. However, it needs a lot more refining, since the crude version of that model is not particularly well-equipped to deal with the difference between e.g. a movie-streaming site, on the one hand, and a shorthand news site, or even a site like Twitter, on the other hand. I may well watch a movie for 180 minutes but get less value from it than I do a tweet. So attention != value, or at least the concept of 'attention' needs refining to be more than simply 'time I spend on a website', but there's a promising kernel there, I think.
[0] Compare it to Starbucks's gift card program. Starbucks is one of the largest commercial debtors in the world just by virtue of the vast number of Starbucks gift cards in people's drawers. These things add up quickly and bigly.
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