> They should charge for their site. Some nontrivial number of those 40% users would pay, and a paid user is ridiculously more profitable in most cases than the highest CPMs.
I don't think you understand why ads are the funding of choice for most of the internet.
Imagine the last time you read a random article on a tech blog. You probably were linked to it on HN, or a friend linked it on Twitter, or on Reddit, or whatever. It's likely not something that is in your news feed.
For most people, that is how they find content. There's a minority of users who will use RSS or follow specific sites on Twitter, but 99% of users will be linked to it, or maybe Google it, or otherwise stumble across it. They have no actual ties to that site, and will likely read what they are linked and then leave the site until it shows up on HN/Reddit/Twitter again.
Now, there are a few sites that have loyal followings. I'm subscribed to GiantBomb.com, for example, because I love its content. But for most sites, putting content behind a paywall would destroy them. No one will pay to read a random article they were linked - and people won't link articles that they know their friends would have to pay to read.
Instead, sites must make money from incoming traffic - and thus, ads. If you have 500 regular readers but see 10,000 coming in from a Reddit post, you'll get money from those page views.
And, of course, this is also why "pay to opt out" is flawed: you're not going to pay every site you visit over the course of the day (possibly 200+, if you're an avid news/social bookmarking reader) to remove those ads, no matter how convenient.
I know we like to pretend that web users will reward the best content by paying, but that model ignores the way the web works. It's not like there's 20 sites we all read; there's a ton we see every day.
Yeah, ultimately I'd love to see ABP offer a tip jar or subscription I could pay that could then be distributed to the operators of the sites I visit. Perhaps take all the sites I visited and divide out the subscription fee. This way you could support even infrequently visited sites without resorting to advertising.
I don't think you understand why ads are the funding of choice for most of the internet.
Imagine the last time you read a random article on a tech blog. You probably were linked to it on HN, or a friend linked it on Twitter, or on Reddit, or whatever. It's likely not something that is in your news feed.
For most people, that is how they find content. There's a minority of users who will use RSS or follow specific sites on Twitter, but 99% of users will be linked to it, or maybe Google it, or otherwise stumble across it. They have no actual ties to that site, and will likely read what they are linked and then leave the site until it shows up on HN/Reddit/Twitter again.
Now, there are a few sites that have loyal followings. I'm subscribed to GiantBomb.com, for example, because I love its content. But for most sites, putting content behind a paywall would destroy them. No one will pay to read a random article they were linked - and people won't link articles that they know their friends would have to pay to read.
Instead, sites must make money from incoming traffic - and thus, ads. If you have 500 regular readers but see 10,000 coming in from a Reddit post, you'll get money from those page views.
And, of course, this is also why "pay to opt out" is flawed: you're not going to pay every site you visit over the course of the day (possibly 200+, if you're an avid news/social bookmarking reader) to remove those ads, no matter how convenient.
I know we like to pretend that web users will reward the best content by paying, but that model ignores the way the web works. It's not like there's 20 sites we all read; there's a ton we see every day.