As for the other point you’re making, that’s complete nonsense. You don’t differentiate your revenue streams by serving a sub par product to your paying customers.
Serve those stupid ads to free users, treat your paying customers with respect.
As someone in media, I’m tired of well-intentioned media outlets try to strike a reasonable balance only to get yelled at for it like they aren’t already walking a tightrope. They have staffs of people to pay for, payroll. Travel budgets. Offices. Legal bills. And that they get hell for trying to give an inch, in my opinion, sucks.
If you want them to offer an ad-free tier, tell them that directly! Given that they are clearly thinking about it suggests they might listen to you.
But your binary way of approaching this is not helping and ultimately discourages companies who want to wean themselves off of adtech. Ripping off the band-aid is a lot harder than you’re making it out to be.
The first thing I did the other day was emailing Nilay Patel, editor in chief at The Verge, to share my thoughts on the subject.
That’s before I posted on my site. As for “ripping off the band aid”, again, that’s nonsense. I’m not saying they should drop ads. They should figure out how much a user is worth and then price their membership accordingly.
The vast, vast majority won’t switch anyway because that’s the reality of today’s web.
As for your first point, I’d not have noticed that because I run multiple adblockers everywhere and I am THRILLED that I can now support in other ways.