For the past 20 years, I've been hearing how ads will be less annoying once advertisers can target more effectively. I think the exact opposite has happened. Look at some shoes on Zappos and the next week or two they are going to follow you everywhere. For me, that's far more annoying than random untargeted ads.
A few months ago, I was thinking about buying a new truck. I was sitting out on the deck with my iPad and Google'd the name of the local Dodge dealership, found a truck I liked, then Google'd some specs on it. A bit later, the girlfriend and I drove over to the dealership and I ended up driving a new truck home that day.
For roughly six weeks afterwards, everywhere I went on the web (on the iPad) I saw presented with ads about new trucks. The majority of the ads were for the specific dealership that I bought it from (that I had Google'd) and the others were mostly for other dealerships in the area. I got to where I'd click on them every time I saw them just because they annoyed me so much. At some point, the ads stopped because I haven't seen one in a while.
But I do think legislation to make you be tracked less would be awesome, but it'd be fighting money.
Is it really? For me, targeted ads come up for either a) products I have already purchased or b) products I've looked at and then decided not to buy. I got my wife an espresso grinder for Christmas, ordered on Dec. 10, but AdSense is still showing me ads for grinders. There is exactly 0.00% chance of me buying another one.
Can we expect our mothers to pay Google a monthy fee to view less adverts on webpages on the Internet? How will their ideas about what the internet-as-utility mean to them change? Will they consider the money they pay to their ISP as already covering this? Would not paying imply that they should be happy to see advertising? How would this model apply to other paid services? Should people pay more to their taxis to be able to shut off the in cab monitors showing ads? Should a monthly additional payment be made to their email client to stop spam? Would they consider it okay to not get advertisements sent to their postal mail by their utility companies if they paid some more?
Would we see a Facebook Premium account where for 10 dollars a month no ads are shown, or a Twitter premium account where no sponsored tweets are delivered?
Now think about this from the point of view of a company or marketeer. Wouldn't those consumers who could afford to pay extra to not see ads be worth more to you? Would they imply that they had more purchasing power?
[1] http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/
I imagine the FTC/DOJ might have something to say about that too.
Google could lead the industry to implement a protocol, whereby third-party adblockers could implement a subscription service by which the user bids on impressions the same way as advertisers do now. If the user wins, no ads are displayed and a micropayment is deducted from their balance.
The necessity to mediate payments would provide an opportunity for adblockers to generate per-user or per-transaction revenue, which would incentivize them to support the system.
The added revenue would enable adblockers to devote sufficient time to blacklist maintenance for revenue-generating customers, further strengthening the pressure on sites that don't participate in the system, and providing added value to participating users.
I suspect this system may not work, because the auction mechanism would be vulnerable to manipulation by the advertisers, or because the price to the user would not be commesurate with the perceived benefit. But it is plausible, and would be legal.
These ads wouldn't exist in the first place if it wasn't for Google.
The main way Google changed things was AdSense, which for a while at least replaced horrible "punch the monkey" type ads with text ads.
Unfortunately text ads don't seem to be so popular these days.
With money as a motivator, we have ended up with a lot of keyword-spammy poor quality content.
I would pay Google to use search, if it came to this, because I find immense and irreplaceable value in Google Search that no other company seems to be able to replicate.
But paying anyone to not see ads on websites? That's absurd. I'll use adblocking while I can, and when/if those websites find a way to reliably block adblocking-using visitors, I'll just stop visiting.
Meanwhile, websites will code around this and display more ads from other sources, and reap the rewards of getting paid by Google for not showing Google ads.
No thanks, I'll keep using Adblock.
It looks like as an average case, looking to spend $25 or above should get one 100% AdSense free Internet. But that option isn't there. Given how much value a typical power user gains from Google and the content websites combined, $25 a month is a bargain.
Ads can be ignored easily enough, especially with a blocker. Why pay for a service that you can get with an ad blocker?
What's needed is a Spotify premium-style model, where a monthly subscription is paid by the user, which is distributed to the content producers. (Or perhaps a tiered or capped system, where payment is tied to amount of content consumed). Such a system would also enforce better content being produced, with linkbait and sites designed for users to erroneously click on ads becoming non-viable.
Single-source subscriptions (like a newspaper would be) don't make sense for the internet. Distribution costs are negligible compared to print, and ease of accessing content is not tied to geography.
Remember flattr? IIRC it failed because a lack of adoption and because micropayments are expensive (fuck banks for this one).
Bank payments may be better now too, with more competition and greater use of non-traditional currency (ie Bitcoin).
So, going forward, it will be in Google's interest to make ads ever more annoying and creepy so that people are pushed into paying to end the pain. That is not a world in which I want to live.
How about this: Google pays me for watching their annoying ads. Given that I have the upper hand on the tech front (adblockers) and am the one buying the products, shouldn't I be the one being paid?
If not, why should we give Google money to take potential income from smaller companies?
https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/6084026?hl=en&...
Some people use blocking software that I know like blocking software so they can block all the other terrible ads that come from other ad providers. Those other ads are really intrusive. So, if some of the funds are going to the contributors of a site. Why not have another plan meant for blocking higher amount of ads.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/11/07/a-twitte...
I don't have adblocker/ublock/etc installed because I dislike adsense or adwords. I can ignore them just fine, but every blue moon I'll find something worth clicking.
It's for 99.999999% of the other ads that drive me insane. Or did I completely miss something?
If this is popular, it will probably increase ad revenue, so more sites are likely to want to show Google ads, which means people not paying into this scheme will see even more ads as a result.
Right now sites are being paid by advertisers. Under this scheme they're being paid by users. It doesn't say they're being paid more (or less), so I don't see why this would have any effect on whether sites use ads or not.
But under YouTube Red, revenue for creators went up. I would imagine the same thing would happen here.
This system is great because it's a) seamless (you just get one bill a month), b) based on usage (you visited these pages) and c) is a market (the price you pay is based on competitive rates that advertisers would otherwise be willing to pay).
