Why ads are a problem
typed.pw
typed.pw
Here's the reality - We only have 2 options to enable the value exchange of content: direct (via you moving funds to the publisher) or in-direct (monetizing through ads). It's a binary choice. It's one or the other, that's it. There's no magic 3rd option that's available (today).
Here are a few reasons why advertising is still a better model:
- It's fast. Faster than money transfer.
- It's efficient. Money is not cheap to transfer, even today.
- It's passive. No mental energy expended or decision making required.
- It's anonymous. No need for payment details or 3rd party to handle funds.
- It's secure. Again no need for payment information, there's not much ads can do. (Malware is a different problem.)
- It's accessible. Your wealth doesn't determine the amount of content you can get. Everyone can access everything equally.
This is fundamentally a question of human behavior and the common reaction is to take things for free when possible. People just do not value content that highly, if at all. You can already see the reaction to rising rates for netflix and spotify even though they provide so much value, certainly more than an equally priced cup of coffee.
Add to that the amount of willpower and decisioning it requires to judge whether a piece of content is worth it or not and it's clear that this is not a scalable system. Perhaps a "cable subscription" for the internet with time-based billing for each domain might be something that works as a direct-payment option in the future but this is a massive technical, security and privacy challenge the way things are now.
I do agree that ads have gotten out of hand recently - however this is an implementation problem. Regulation and standards and enforcement are what's needed to fix this. It has nothing to do with the ad model itself which is still the most universally scalable and viable monetization system for content.
I mean, would you say that dumping a type of toxic waste into a river is an "implementation" problem when there's no law against it?
> It's fast.
Except when ad-frameworks slow down browsing to a crawl because they heap innumerable delays on the page-load in order to "auction" the spot and maximize revenue.
> It's anonymous
Except for our big ad-networks that incorporated quita lot of fingerprinting, profiling, and even surveillance.
> It's secure
Except for how ad-networks are a vector for malware, since there's no incentive to vet content beyond maintaining their own throughput.
Ads are fast. Ad networks however are slow. Bad tech with old vendors is most of the problem. Our ads load faster than the content half the time. Sites like Washington Post, The Guardian, Ars Technica show how you can have a fast site with ads. Very solvable through technology.
Ads are definitely more anonymous than payments. Payments = credit cards or bank accounts. Guess what that means? Your name, address, age, credit history, employment, etc all perfectly accessible and tied to your identity. Profiling is used to give you more relevant ads. Someone who doesn't have children doesn't need to see diaper ads so it's a perfectly reasonable thing. I agree that sometimes it's taken too far with retargeting where you see the same ads constantly but this is a different matter. Our network focuses mostly on context of the page (tech site = tech ads) and performs just as well without any tracking (other than history of ads seen to avoid showing same ads).
The internet is a vector for malware. There absolutely is a way to vet content, but standards and enforcement is just not there right now. Ad networks dont really suffer anything when bad stuff happens so they have no incentive to do much about it. We don't even accept any 3rd party content on our network so we're far more secure than even the sites we run on.
Again, all of this is down to implementation - nothing wrong with the ad model itself.
I believe you posted a reply while I was still making postscript-editing. A bad habit of mine, I know.
> I mean, would you say that dumping a type of toxic waste into a river is an "implementation" problem when there's no law against it?
Yes. This doesn't mean we stop doing anything that produces toxic waste. Cars are also a vector for criminal activity. Like guns and knives and cellphones. We don't get rid of them either. Instead we use regulation and standards to enforce the safety mechanisms and proper ethical behavior.
So what does 15n1xkeDCGJJQAcYv17M4bPVfGqnksihLG tell you about me?
New user seen, gets assigned random UUID like ABC12345. Show an ad based on what we know about site context.
Show ad, track that ABC12345 has seen this ad. Next time, we check your history and know to show you a different ad. If you click on anything, we see that as a signal that you perhaps like that category of ads.
Eventually we have a list of ads you've seen (to keep the frequency of those ads in check) and what categories you seem interested in (based on your clicks). Combine this with the context of the site and we can give you better ads. We DO NOT magically get your name, address, birthday, or any other personally identifiable information.
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Just for more detail: Facebook and Google are different. They are the biggest adtech players and own about 80% of the market not only because of their size but because of how much they know about you. Most people willingly tell both companies everything about their lives so they have a distinct advantage. They also know your identity across devices because of logins. These massive companies are a much much bigger privacy issue than any independent adtech company simply because independent players do not have access to all this detailed 1st party information (or it's provided through rough aggregated/statistical means).
I'd prefer a micropayment system that was as automated as the current ad system is. Browsing a site would trigger an initial small payment. The total payment would be proportional to engagement, including the percentage of the article read, time spent on the site, links followed, and so on. There'd also be options to pay more, or to cancel payment.
I'm guessing that browsing would cost about $0.001, and that reading would cost between $.01 and $0.10 for average news articles, blog posts, etc. Magazine-length articles and reports would cost more. Is that about right to match typical ad income?
The most scalable payments option is typical credit cards or bank transfers, which obviously come with identity information. Perhaps there can be an option for bitcoin but it's definitely not ready today. No company would deal with that at scale.
The remaining issues of scale/tech remain though which is still a big problem.
> It's efficient
Money may not be changing hands, but a lot of information is, which is easily worth more. Leaving out these costs are yet another reason why advertisers have a reputation for dishonesty.
Also, the article specifically discussed the terrible power efficency that is always going to be associated with the extra transfer and processing associated with fetching ads. Or do you think they get to violate conservation on energy to be downloaded? If you are adding ad to a page, you are making the client pay more to see it. Offloading costs like this - while pretending it is efficient - should really be criminal.
> It's passive
Bullshit, and you know it.
The very idea of advertising is to be distracting. The arms-race we've seen over the last few decades where advertising went from simple banners, to popups, to various other dynamic rendering tricks, to the modern modal/click-through video ads - and worse - are all about not being passive. This is suck a basic concept in advertising that I have to conclude you are dissembling deliberately, or are such a "true believer" in advertising you cannot see it any other way.
Also, it takes an incredible amount of energy to ignore ads. Anybody that thinks ads don't cost any mental energy is either lying or addicted. Install an adblocker and use it 100% reliably for several months to break the addiction, and you will be shocked at the energy advertising wastes when you see it again.
> It's accessible
Except if someone is poor, they cannot afford whatever it is you are advertising. I've seen this meme a lot recently, so it's obviously a talking point the advertising indujstry is using to try to justify their drain on society. You're not fooling anybody, and this kind of appeal only makes advertisers look desperate.
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While Terr_ already mentioned this one...
> It's secure.
You don't get to exclude malware, when advertising is the vector.
Even ignoring that, leaking tracking information makes you malware!
These are externalities. Do you get upset that articles have images in them? What about products coming in packaging that you just throw away? Isn't that gas and energy you are wasting on something you don't want?
Power efficiency of ads is really not that big of a deal.
>>> Bullshit, and you know it.
I was talking about the effort involved in choosing to pay for each pageview. Not ad formats. I believe you're conflating the two together.
>>> The very idea of advertising is to be distracting.
Actually the idea is to gain your attention. And yes, we already know this because it's quite literally what advertisers are paying for. Your attention.
>>> advertising went from simple banners, to popups, to various other dynamic rendering tricks
Yes, this is an implementation issue where ads have gotten out of hand. I agree with you that we need to return to better standards. However this doesn't mean the advertising model is broken. It's still magnitudes less effort required than having to decide to pay everytime you load a new page.
>>> to ignore ads
The point isn't to ignore ads. Advertisers are paying for your attention which pays for the content. It obviously wouldn't be a very good model if they never got the attention that they paid for. Yes it takes energy to ignore, also takes energy to choose to pay. Ads are generally easier to deal with.
>>> when advertising is the vector
Everything is a vector. Pick any object in the world. It's a vector for use by a criminal. We should focus on stopping the criminals, not banning everything.
>>> leaking tracking information makes you malware
Genuinely don't understand this. What tracking information and what is harming you?
Saying that doesn't make it true. The article says otherwise, and I believe it. I really don''t understand how you think this could be true.
Also "not that big of a deal"? So you think it's fine if I quietly tap into your power lines and steal some of your electricity, as long as it's only a small amount that "isn't that big of a deal"?
> Do you get upset that articles have images in them?
Do you have a hard time understanding the differenced between the content I requested, and crap added in that has nothing to do with the content I requested, which is specifically designed to distract me from that content?
If you truly cannot see the difference here, I don't know how to help you.
> I believe you're conflating the what I mentioned about the effort involved in choosing to pay vs types of annoying ad formats.
NO, I am NOT.
The type of ad format isn't particularly relevant. Advertising - any type - is by definition designed to distract people that see them, and it takes a significant mental effort to work around these distractions.
Be aware that if you want to argue against this point, you're challenging one of the basic laws of marketing as it has been practiced for many decades.
> Actually the idea is to gain your attention.
Thank you for admitting advertising is trying to be distracting. That is, the opposite of "passive". You seem to be arguing against your previous claims.
> having to decide to pay every time you load a new page.
This is a complete straw-man argument. You're suggesting that "paying every time" is the only alternative to advertising, which is patent nonsense. Even in the case of a paywall model, nobody would "pay every time"; subscription models have always existed.
Are you going to pretend that Patreon doesn't exist? Many models of funding exist and are being used successfully.
> Everything is a vector.
If you don't understand the concept of minimizing the attack surface, you really should refrain from making security claims. Advertising is adding additional attack vectors.
Besides, it is incredibly dishonest to try to say advertising is on equal footing here. Ad networks have been the vector of choice for a long time. Some of that is because of their utter disregard for security. They are also chosen as a vector because ad networks by definition reach a wide audience.
> What tracking information and what is harming you?
I'm not sure how to respond to this. Are you seriously ignorant of the tracking done by ad networks? Or did you miss the last few years of data breeches that expose information and the powerful new machine learning tools we have to analyze large databases?
If you are gathering information - ANY information - about what people do on the internet, you are creating a target. If you are aggregating that information - again, ANY information - across sites, even if you supposedly anonymize[1] it, you are creating datasets that are the most tempting target imaginable for insurance companies, extortionists, stalkers, and governments with national security letters.
In a sane world, you would be liable for any damage caused by that database you created.
[1] As DJB says[2], "Hashing is Magic Crypto Pixie Dust, which takes personally identifiable information, and makes it incomprehensible to the marketing department."
[2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...
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Advertising is meant to gain your attention. This is not a secret conspiracy, it is quite literally the entire business. That being said, there is vast differential in the amount of energy expended in ignoring content vs the amount needed to make a willful decision of how to value and purchase said content.
Subscriptions are actually even harder to decide on because they are a much higher cost that requires a commitment with a single outlet and trust that their quality will continue to be to your liking vs a single article.
Patreon is not an alternative funding model - it is still direct payment/funds transfer. It's just optional. It's also not viable for any scalable business. Not everything can or should be a small little site.
Advertising is packaged with content because the publisher owns the right to that content and how it's distributed. This is the same in every other medium ever invented. Same with any other product you buy. You get it as it comes. If you're not compensating that advertiser for that content directly, then they have every right to include advertising to offset the cost of creating and distributing that content to you which you requested. Would you rather they deny your request?
Everything is a security risk. You should stay in a nuclear bunker and off the internet to truly minimize surface area. However that's not realistic. Ad networks definitely have an implementation problem with not enough standards on malware testing, and yes they're a good choice because of their scale. However guns are also efficient at killing and cars are efficient at escaping, should we also get rid of both because they're used by criminals?
Any database containing data and thus value becomes a target. Should we also stop creating any kind of database because it might become a potential target? So medical records, court proceedings, tax records, insurance claims and every other database should immediately be destroyed because someone might want to access it? Again the real problem here is the fact that criminals will be criminals, not the tools they use or targets they go after. There should absolutely be more safeguards with ad networks along with liability as I've stated in previous posts (and I'm doing my best to make that happen) but arguing that we should get rid of the advertising model because of some security issues does not make sense.
> This is not a secret conspiracy.
I never said anything close to that, and I'm not sure whee you got that idea from.
> Not everything can or should be a small little site.
Obviously. Many things can be done small scale, and some people even prefer that for a varietyh of reasons. Patronage is an alternative funding model. It should go without saying that there isn't a 1-to-1 mapping between possible funding models and the projects that want funding. Clearly patronage will only work for some situations.
> they have every right to include advertising to offset the cost of creating and distributing that content to you which you requested
Yes, they do.
Just like the end-user to which they gave a copy of their content has every right to view that advertising, or cut it out, or pay someone to cut it out, or simply decide they want to go somewhere else. Creative works have a copyright, which does not extend to use.
Advertising has always involved risk.
> security
If you want to actually learn the problems of the digital exhaust (or data trail) we leave behind, I suggest listening to some of Dan Geer's talks in the last 1-2 years. The only reason this isn't a problem right now is that the tech is still new. However, the last year of leaks and compromised databases has shown that the peace will not last.
> criminals will be criminals
Yes. Exactly. Which is why it is important to not let power concentrate, and the databases that advertisers are building (with Google and Facebook at the top) are a power that is new to the human experience. The solution is to limit how much damage an be done by limiting how much data can be aggregated.
You might characterize my goals here as a type of self regulation, as I fear the blowback as people finally figure out what technology has been doing. The alternative to self regulation is some type of Butlerian Jihad (probably misguided and poorly targeted). This isn't really hyperbole as these are two extremes and reality is usually somewhere in the middle. That said, when I talk to non-technical people about how modern tech works (adsense, other tracking by ad networks/etc, "smart" TVs, and other supposedly-"free" services), there is a common first reaction: "Why aren't they in jail?"
> guns
Are a bad comparison in many ways. The risk from a criminal with a gun stops after they are caught. The entire problem with data is that it is a permanent risk.
> (and I'm doing my best to make that happen)
For that, my applause and thanks!
> arguing that we should get rid of the advertising model
That is not my goal! Your replies are often arguing with straw men.
I believed advertising is on shaky ground now that General Purpose Computer has given powerful tools let people view data as they desire. Adblocking is only the beginning. This is a pragmatic statement, because I've been watching a backlash against advertising happen for several years now. However, advertising will never go away entirely, as it is one of the useful funding models.
My point in arguing is a refutation of the well-known fallacies and talking points in your initial post. You have argued against some (that advertising is in any way passive - as you say, it is "meant to gain your attention"). You have also made some patently false claims about power and anonymity (HTTP requests are generally not anonymous, even without the crazy tracking that the ad networks do). You also have made numerous claims that elevate advertising as the only or majority option for funding something on the network. I've already mentioned security above.
These specific claims are what I have a serious problem with. Quite a few funding models exist, and many variations are being explored. This is one of the huge benefits of modern technology: it made available so many more options in every area, including business models. The human experience with internetworking is still in its infancy, and I suspect we haven't even discovered the best ways of utilizing the network for business purposes.
http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/11/malvertising-is-cyberc...
Advertising is an attack vector. A security risk for the end user.
As mentioned in another comment - We also have cars and cellphones that can be used by criminals. That doesn't mean modern transportation and communication has a problem, it means that criminals will be criminals and we need better ways of dealing with them. As far as I can see, that's an implementation problem.
Here's the truth: I've been in the ad industry for a long time and there is literally 0 enforcement of anything. Lots of fraud and shady practices but no regulation and nobody to answer to. If you do get caught, change the name of the company and try again. I can guarantee that if we actually send people to jail for not vetting malware or running illegal or shady ads, this problem will pretty much go away immediately.
So the question is, who are these special few?
NYT times costs hundreds of millions to run. That's just a single publisher. Most major sites require somewhere in the 8 figures. As theory and data have shown, human behavior is not conducive to paying if you can avoid it. Unless your plan is to turn content publishers into tax-funded state-run companies, I fail to see how this could possibly work.
* Before it's mentioned: Wikipedia is perhaps the only example of donations working at scale. However, it's not really working because Wikipedia doesn't produce any content. It's also not a business. Wikimedia which is an actual business runs the wikia.com network of sites and they're all monetized through ads.
Maybe their product isn't worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
As for willingness to pay, you seem to be projecting your own selfish behavior onto others. I know quite a few counter-examples that prove people are willing to pay for content they actually value. They have embraced technology to lower costs, and have cultivated very generous audiences using places like Patron.
> only example of donations working at scale
LOL. Only if you don't look. Also, why do you think everything has to work "at scale"? Small-but-loyal audiences are fine.
I believe this is what you're doing with your comments. A few counter examples are great but we already have billions of people online constantly generating data and plenty of experiments that have shown that donations do not work.
> Also, why do you think everything has to work "at scale"?
Because the internet is at scale. I'm not talking about a specific site but rather the donation model in general. Very few actually donate and thus it cannot sustain the quality and quantity of content that is available today. A few site/podcasts/shows/whatever might be able to work with this but it will not work for the internet as we know it today.
Value is subjective, just because it might not be worth direct payment doesn't mean it's worthless (ie: Facebook). As a common example take a look at adblocking: if you don't like the ads on a site, then you should stop visiting the site. By using adblocker and continuing to go to the site, your actions show that you find value in the content but do not care to let the publisher be compensated. This is just one of many manifestations of the human behavior I've described where donations by the few does not support content for the many.
But that's just one idea. The point is that it's not a dichotomy of low-friction, indirect ads versus high-friction, direct payment. There may be other options.
Not really. This is the same as the "stealing causes us to raise prices for other shoppers" misperception. Supply and demand set the prices of products and services. If advertisers could maximize profits by charging more they already would be. Advertisement dollars mainly just come out of profits.
Costs affect prices because if companies can't make a profit, they stop doing business. Under (near perfect) competition, prices tend to be a bit over cost. Supply and demand may be the mechanism, but costs do indeed come into it.
In many cases though, advertising lowers prices because if you can sell more products, the average cost can be lower because of economies of scale.
The cost of marketing (which includes advertising) is usually a small fraction of the overall cost of production for most products and services.
An interesting environmentalist argument would be, to ask everyone to pay more to producers of all kinds (online or otherwise), to prevent the "need" for extra resource consumption on any medium.
It "should" be an easy argument because people are clearly already paying for ads, they just don't see how. For instance, your electric bill would go down if you knew your TV would run for a half hour less every day.
I feel like there has to be a happy medium where publishers get paid some reasonable amount for their content, and readers also get to enjoy the content for a reasonable price. I think this model can coexist with the current model if the reader/content consumer doesn't mind the ads.
Individuals are the largest single source of funding, but they don't make up the majority of it, at least for NPR. Corporate sponsorship is the next biggest piece, and while it's not very intrusive, AFAIC the sponsorship messages on NPR are basically ads (very tolerable ads, but still ads).
And unfortunately, the messages they run to acknowledge corporate and foundation sponsors get more and more ad-like with each passing year.
A rationally self-interested person would not donate, because in most cases, their donation would not give them as much benefit as the cost.
The way you'd measure benefit is the value received from the site, times times the chance that their donation makes the difference between the site existing and not existing. That chance is typically a very small number.
Naive articles like this don't bother factoring in what the chance is that your donation will make a difference....in other words they ignore the fact that most people would rather be a freeloader than a sucker.
That implies "most" content has negligible value. People that offer quality content seem to have no problem getting people to donate. Just because you haven't seen this doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
> They certainly fail any game theoretic model. > A rationally self-interested person would not donate,
This isn't particularly relevant, as humans are not "rational actors". Even thought economists like to pretend otherwise, "Homo economicus" obviously doesn't actually exist in reality.
> Naive articles like this don't bother factoring in what the chance is that your donation will make a difference
Sure they did. You just don't like the results. Good content will usually be paid for, and junk content will go out of business, just like they should.
> most people would rather be a freeloader than a sucker.
Your politics is showing. Such a limited view is not helpful.
one designated spotlight, no animations
i actually pay attention to them willingly
It just improved the implementation to what it should be. Our ad network takes a similar approach and sees great results.
Regardless though, the advertising model itself is completely fine.
People always seem to forget that most of the Internet is free BECAUSE of ads.
There are websites which are actually free to end users. They don't serve ads, they might have a donation page, and largely exist because the operator simply wants to publish something. Most of the 'old web' embodies these qualities.
The assumption that the only way for websites to make money is via ads or paywalls is completely pervasive and it's simply not true. These two options are the most naive monetization strategies. My favorite counterexample is the Welcome to Nightvale Podcast. Their podcast is gratis and without ads. They make money through donations, selling swag, their book, and by performing live shows -- all which sell out extremely fast because I've been trying to get tickets recently.
The Internet is quite expensive because of ads.
Really? Not true because why? You haven't actually provided any real counterexample of a 3rd and better option.
Payment is either direct (funds transferred) or indirect (attention monetized through ads). The podcast you mentioned is just direct (donations, selling books, selling tickets, etc). In fact they seem to make money doing other things for direct payment and do the podcast for free, so it's not even a real business model but rather just a hobby.
> The Internet is quite expensive because of ads.
The internet is incredibly free, open, democratic and accessible because of ads. If you had to pay for the same amount of content consumption your monthly bill would likely be in the hundreds of dollars per month.
That's because there isn't such an option -- at least not that I know of. Ads can be added on top of pretty much any website to generate revenue independent of the actual content of the site itself. And if the content is valuable enough paywalls are also universal in this sense.
The '3rd option' I'm proposing is something dependent on the underlying business and admittedly requires creativity and business sense.
> The podcast you mentioned is just direct... but rather just a hobby.
That's quite a simplification -- without the podcast they wouldn't sell books, swag, tickets, or receive donations. You can consider their business model as a form of direct payment but no listener is required to give them any form of compensation and their model is much more successful than if they had simply paywalled their content.
> The internet is incredibly free, open, democratic and accessible because of ads.
I disagree and think it's none of those precisely because of ads -- at least as it applies to ad sponsored websites.
* Websites that serve ads are not free. We might have to agree to disagree on this point but as long as ads serve their intended purpose they impose a cost on every user that views them.
* Ad supported websites are not open, as every part of the ad network except for the literal content served to the client is closed and a trade secret.
* Ad supported websites are not democratic because advertisers will not want to have their brand associated with 'unsavory' topics or opinions which means that the overall content on the web is curated by small group ad networks that effectively 'bless' content on the web by providing them ad revenue.
* The accessibility of ad sponsored content is just an accidental byproduct of paying customers visiting the site. If ad networks had the tools to discriminate between people who had high disposable income then the web would no longer be accessible to the poor as it would make business sense to simply not serve them the page.
This contradicts your original post. And it's true, there is no 3rd option. Very smart people have spent decades looking at alternatives and yet here we are.
> That's quite a simplification -- without the podcast they wouldn't sell books, swag, tickets, or receive donations.
Ok, let's reframe it then. It's a business that sells books, swag and tickets. And the podcast is a marketing cost center. Same outcome, they're a company that sells stuff for money. And sometimes people donate.
> Websites that serve ads are not free.
They are. The monetary sense is what we're talking about here. Not sure of this other "cost" your describing.
> Ad supported websites are not open, as every part of the ad network except for the literal content served to the client is closed and a trade secret.
What? By open I mean that websites are equally available to anyone regardless of logged in users or anonymous. This isn't a closed platform like Facebook where you have to be logged in to use it, thus revealing your identity.
> Ad supported websites are not democratic because advertisers will not want to have their brand associated with 'unsavory' topics or opinions which means that the overall content on the web is curated by small group ad networks that effectively 'bless' content on the web by providing them ad revenue.
That's not how it works. There's a tremendous amount of advertising material to fit virtually any vertical or environment. Sites are democratic because it's the audience that gives them value. Give the readers what they want and you get more readers and thus a more valuable audience to monetize. The site doesnt get to just make up whatever content it wants, it only works if there is a readership for it.
> The accessibility of ad sponsored content is just an accidental byproduct of paying customers visiting the site. If ad networks had the tools to discriminate between people who had high disposable income then the web would no longer be accessible to the poor as it would make business sense to simply not serve them the page.
It's still free. You choose to access an API, whatever that may be. You don't get to decide what the format is and you don't get to decide what the content (the ads are content in the HTML) is.
> The assumption that the only way for websites to make money is via ads or paywalls is completely pervasive and it's simply not true.
You are lumping all websites together, which is unhelpful. A tumblr page vs Apple.com. How you measure profitable is not cut and dry. Google's search isn't profitable, but the reselling of data and injection of data side is. Just because you have an agenda, doesn't mean the ecosystem matches your ideal wishes. The internet itself transmits VAST (pun!) amounts of data and ads are a small portion of that compared to say...video. 300 Hours of Video Uploaded to YouTube Every Minute. How much of that are ads? It's about 2 hours. The internet is not expensive because of ads. They sit nicely on top of it, which is part of why they are tolerated.
That's a silly definition of free because it's too narrow. Imagine a website that required you to move your mouse in a circle for a minute before it allowed you to access the content. Would you argue that the website is still free? Is your time not valuable?
> You are lumping all websites together, which is unhelpful. A tumblr page vs Apple.com. How you measure profitable is not cut and dry.
Right, I'm trying to consider a website as part of a larger business which has far more monetization opportunities than if we demand that the literal website must be independently profitable.
It's broader than "this is an ad this is not" when looking at "content", so fix your definition to the level of specificity you are comfortable with to start.
> consider a website as part of a larger business which has far more monetization opportunities than if we demand that the literal website must be independently profitable.
I agree that it's a good initiative, but the masses (of which I'm included, as well as HN) do not produce businesses as much as (relatively useless) content.
Magazines also are affordable because of ads. Most magazines are pure trash I would never read.
I certainly don't find celebrity gossip very valuable but the vast amount of people who read and consume that content shows that it is valuable to them. Who am I to judge that? There's nothing good to come of vastly reducing the amount of content out there. More choice and options are always a good thing.
2) Ads only created part of the internet. Insisting otherwise only makes you willfully ignorant.
3) Welcome to capitalism. Websites will get to find out their true value. I look forward to a lot of worthless junk going away.
With donations, I'm offering free information, that they're really supposed to pay for, but instead of just asking for the money as an exchange, I rely on the goodness of their heart, or guilting them into feeling bad and owing me. Then they pay, but the information was already free, so they're not actually paying for it, instead they're paying for the smugness of being one of the few that actually paid what they owed, and I become the charity case in their eyes, and they are disappointed if they're not rewarded for their good deed. They expect me to do something, give them some feedback, either by personally thanking them, or posting on the website how great they are for donating. Either way, I owe them, they owe me, and it's all in this fuzzy emotional space that's outside the actual exchange of information and costs of hardware and networking.
I hate donations. I tried them once, and where I would've made $100 per day, I'd be lucky if I got $1 per day, maybe even $1 per week it was that low. Because I don't want to have a "family". I don't want charity. I refunded donations and put ads back up.
Ads are what people want. Nobody wants to pay directly, and nobody wants to be guilted and in debt. The people who donate are doing it for other purposes than paying for nothing. They want something out of it, and I don't want to give them it.
Go ahead and block ads. So what. They aren't for everyone. Then you get free information, donated to you by the people who like ads and support those who pay to advertise, and the businesses who take the risk in paying to have their name part of your site.
People love ads, even those who block them.
You're not going to change human behavior so donations instead of ads means 99% of the content out there disappears.