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Comment by andykx | Hacker News Reader

It is not impossible to advertise without tracking users.

For some reason people just have an aversion to paying for stuff they use. Facebook's revenue per user is less than 7$, I don't use facebook, but do not mind paying that little for something I use instead of getting tracked wherever I go. Similarly Google's service that I use like gmail and photos are easily worth about 7$ per month. I would pay if they said they will stop tracking me. I don't know about youtube.

YouTube being the only one you've listed that has a premium option. The problem is people will say they'll pay but as soon as the option comes up, they don't.

Sure, but YouTube doesn't stop tracking you when you pay.

But what does that mean? YouTube keeps a history list, which I download and periodically reset. If it didn't I would need to add some sort of Firefox add-on that remembered which videos I'd seen.

What else are they "tracking"? Does YouTube have tracking on other sites (like Facebook, Twitter etc)? I haven't seen anything like that.

You can switch the history off, I presume that would work even without Premium, but it never occurred to me to even try it since I definitely want history.

Well, for starters, now they're tracking that you are willing to pay a ransom. That's the same kind of knowledge value as spammers get when a user clicks the "unsubscribe" link in one of their emails.

I found the best method against spam is to disable download of remote images in email client. Having no viewing confirmation, spam slowly stops.

> You can switch the history off

And trust Google, Ad company, to erase it in its backend?

if youtube isn't tracking me in malicious way, why would I pay them to stop them from tracking me?

but the error here is conflating a tool with a legal person. Google will track me no matter how much I pay them for any of their services, including YouTube.

the situation at the moment is that no-one believes that a corporation who offers a free service is going to not track you because you pay for the premium version. so (a) I'm not going to pay Google or Facebook to get the premium version since it is not going to be untracked and (b) Google and Facebook aren't going to detrack their premium services since no-one believes that's going to happen anyway - the value add is removing ads/playing with the screen off/etc not the absence of tracking.

the best you can do is pay a third party to offer you some service Google or Facebook offers for free, thereby reducing your exposure. for instance, Google surely knows the content of many emails sent to me, but not all of them, since I pay for email from another provider; or I'm strongly considering paying for a substitute for Google docs, except that I don't like unpredictable monthly USD payments.

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own etc..

I personally think a better way to sell YouTube Premium wouldn't be to focus on just the ads, yes that should be a part of it, but consumers have shown they want certain things in particular (via Patreon):

1. A way to support their favourite creators (adblock whitelisting proves people care more about creators than the downsides of ads - I do for sure)

2. A way to get exclusive content in return, or maybe just a shoutout.

Super Chat is one of the best things YouTube has ever done in this regard. It's amazing how much money flows through to creators when they do live-streams & premiere events.

A lesson can be learned from Steam's fight with piracy wrt ad-free versions. You've either got to:

1. Make it an easier sell to purchase YouTube Premium than to get AdBlock (not-likely)

2. Make a significant value-add for the premium offering "be a better service than piracy".

The problem is that YouTube's not been doing too well with option two, and they're simultaneously making their advertising products a worse sell for business customers.

I'm very interested to see how they adapt to the changing market though.

Part of the answer is that YouTube algorithms optimize for engagement, not satisfaction. They don’t show me what they think I’ll like, they show me what they think I’ll keep clicking into. You can pay to subscribe, but that doesn’t change their algorithm.

Why would they if they can still not pay and get ads, which hurt less short-term (spending money can feel like losing hit points), and can be ignored either through effort or an ad blocker? Ten times more so if you still are going to show them ads.

You want people to pay, make them pay. If you worry about ad-driven competitors, then maybe this should serve as a good argument to advocate instituting regulations against funding services with ads.

The problem is that by doing that, you’re skimming the top percentile of your user base with the most purchasing power. You’re much less attractive to advertisers then.

The same argument could be made arguing against the launch of YouTube Premium.

YouTube has essentially monopolized video (especially being that Netflix has no adverts). YouTube knows that from that position, it’s competing only with adblockers.

Notice how the NY Times has subscriptions.

Which makes the New York Times very attractive to advertisers since they show adverts to their subscribers, meaning that they offer a pre-selected audience of people with higher purchasing power.

Google makes $21 on average per US user per month [1], almost all of which comes from advertising. Would you pay $21/mo for your Google services?

[1] https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-every...

I’ve bought zero products via google ads, except the case when I search for a company name and their official homepage is the top sponsored result. Which is insane.

And yet, my eyeballs looking at text with less text than a tweet is worth 21 USD. It feels like Google disrupted, but it’s far away from being optimal for companies.

well, I don't see Google ads so I don't know what the content is, but no-one knows that I bought a coke after seeing an ad for a coke at the train station. but it still works. the effectiveness of advertising is an empirical question.

$21 per user per month, on average, doesn’t imply $21 on you, every single month.

Other users react differently to that advertiser and/or you may click once every few years to bring in $1,000 advertising revenue for them on a very high-margin item.

Just because you've not bought something by clicking on an ad doesn't mean that the advertising has changed your purchasing habits.

...unless you are magically immune from advertising?

I saw a coke sign three hours ago outside. I’ve been surfing the net for one hour and don’t remember a single ad. I don’t use adblockers.

I’m not saying ads don’t work. I’m saying Google Ads are ready to in turn be disrupted.

Especially with bots running amok...

And now we get into magical, unprovable territory. You can't prove the ads don't work so we better continue the status quo!

I’d love to pay £20 a month for a search engine that had results as good as Google, didn’t track me, and behaved responsibly in encouraging a plural web.

Google optimized to help me instead of manipulate me, that would be worth probably $1k a year for me.

Tell that to Spotify, Netflix, Apple, all the other thousands of subscriptions based businesses.

People are maybe less willing to pay for something they’ve been using for free (with ads) for years.

Contextual targeting is fairly kosher and can be genuinely useful. Let's hope changes like these make the current approach less feasible, cost-wise.

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