How Much Would You Pay to Never See an Online Ad Again?

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/how-much-would-you-pay-to-never-see-an-online-ad-again/265063/

by dsr12 • 14 years ago

13 39 14 years ago

swah• 14 years ago

I would consider a Youtube subscription if it was 1-5 USD/mo. No idea how much they make from me in ads.

nivla2• 14 years ago

If you use Youtube enough to be wanting to pay 1-5/month then they could make more than that by displaying ads to you. Freemium+Ad models are sometimes more profitable than subscription based models and in some cases you may find a mix of both (eg: Hulu Plus).

olalonde• 14 years ago

I strongly doubt that. In 2011, Youtube had a trillion views and revenues of about 1 billion$. That's 0.001$/view. You'd have to watch 5000 videos/month to be worth 5$.

s_henry_paulson• 14 years ago

Novel idea for something you would see on an infomercial or skymall, but no tech savvy person would ever purchase one because

(1) Tech people already know how to block ads.

(2) The idea of having a random linux box on your network that has access to all of your internet traffic, and can be compromised as well as a general bottleneck isn't the most comfortable of thoughts.

anonymouz• 14 years ago

add (3) Making exceptions or configuration changes for single sites will be more effort than changing AdBlock settings for a given website directly in your browser.

kylec• 14 years ago

Discussion from yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4767698

brianbreslin• 14 years ago

I don't know anyone who would justify $120+ to get rid of ads. I don't think people see them as THAT huge of an inconvenience.

gte910h3• 14 years ago

I personally block ads because I view them as effective. They're effective enough to pay for decades of television, they probably work.

teeray• 14 years ago

I would pay for something that I could load a budget onto to just pay everyone for the ads they would have shown me so I can browse in peace. I like supporting content creators directly, but I don't want to be hassled making accounts and filling in my credit card info every time.

hornokplease• 14 years ago

What you're describing sounds a little like Flattr[1] to me.

[1] http://flattr.com/

eli4• 14 years ago

I think people have been working on this idea for two decades. For one reason or another it has never really come together.

kaolinite• 14 years ago

A few months ago I saw my mum browsing a website with a horrendous number of adverts. I asked to borrow the computer for 30 seconds, installed AdBlock for Chrome and refreshed the page. I handed it back triumphantly only to be told that she couldn't see the difference and wasn't sure what I'd done. I suspect this will be the response of most people - either you're technical enough to install an adblocker or you don't really care.

gnosis4• 14 years ago

Let her use her browser with AdBlock installed for a few months, then remove it. I'd bet she'd notice the return of all those ads.

sparkplug• 14 years ago

Um, Adblock Plus is free and near perfect.

Am I missing something?

joeblau• 14 years ago

Yeah, all of your mobile devices.

aw3c2• 14 years ago

AdAway works like a charm on Android. it is open source and combines multiple lists.

Opera Mobile allows you to use urlfilter.ini if you need more sophisticated blocking on websites.

nsxwolf• 14 years ago

Not having to install an ad blocker for every browser and every device on your network seems to be the value here.

_wesley_• 14 years ago

Just installed this for the first time. How have I lived without an adblocker before?

brownbat• 14 years ago

I haven't used an ad-blocker in a while (I block javascript and make plugins click to play in Chrome for security, that coincidentally kills most of the stuff).

The most ads I see are on video streaming services. But what's the state of ad-blocking on Hulu? Doesn't Hulu detect if their ads aren't making it to your machine, and halt playback? Has the device addressed this? (Have leading adblockers?)

anons2011• 14 years ago

Not a penny. Adblock Plus (free!) as already mentioned.

gnosis4• 14 years ago

I already see virtually no ads. My setup is Firefox with AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and RequestPolicy, proxied through privoxy.

There are really only two cases where I'd regularly see ads. One was Google text ads. But now that I've quit using Google in favor of DuckDuckGo, I don't see even those (DDG lets you turn ads off).

The other case is seeing some text ads through my email provider, which serves them over SSL -- so they are not subject to being filtered out through privoxy. This is a problem, and I've considered learning javascript just so that I can feed decrypted SSL content through privoxy to filter out the few remaining ads I get through SSL. But so far it's been such a minor problem that I haven't bothered to do so.

eli4• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure you are not the target audience for this product :) I would guess it's mainly for iPad owners.

gte910h3• 14 years ago

Wow, I did not think of that, but may buy it because of this

pdubs• 14 years ago

So...a firewall?

jaequery2• 14 years ago

my mind already blocks out 90% of ads and selectively takes in 10% of useful ads. i find it amusing people would go to such great lengths to achieve what your mind can do already.

grecy2• 14 years ago

I would be interesting in never seeing another Ad again, in my entire life.

i.e. No ads on TV, no ads on the radio, no billboards, nothing in magazines or newspapers. I think our world would be very different with no ads.

gnosis4• 14 years ago

If I had my way, all unsolicited advertising would be banned.

Advertising is an attempt to manipulate people in to buying crap they mostly don't need. It uses either outright lies or lies by omission.

Worst of all, advertising is a corrupting influence on our political process, since the news media constantly caters its content to please advertisers and not to upset them with investigative stories in to the very corporations that fund its broadcasts.

k2enemy• 14 years ago

In net, I think I agree with you, but advertising can also serve an informative role. There are times I've seen a well-targeted and unsolicited ad for something I didn't know existed but solved a problem or want that I had. Ads are also important for letting people know about prices, features, etc. The importance of the informative role of advertising is probably decreasing as the internet provides more and more product and price info, but I think it is still there.

theorique• 14 years ago

It would look like North Korea. But probably a bit nicer and wealthier.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/inside-north-kore...

grecy2• 14 years ago

Billboards are illegal in New Zealand too.

jaequery2• 14 years ago

i personally would find this more interesting if it let you curate your own ads to the networked connected devices. this way, i can make money on behalf of our offices. now wouldn't that be interesting, hmm.

eli4• 14 years ago

You mean like the hotels were doing? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804608

rocky1138• 14 years ago

$0, meaning I don't care that much about seeing ads. Plus I've got adblock and disable flash until clicked.

pippy• 14 years ago

I tried to give the internet a go without ads after an upgrade. It wasn't that bad, advertisers have improved.

Until I tried to watch a 10 second clip on youtube of Ace Ventura saying "yes Satan?". After a 20 second ad for a car, music started playing from the side ad. Clicking the mute button took me to their site. I closed it, refreshed the video and after sitting through the same car video the same side ad started playing.

So I installed adblock.

TV ads don't play same time when your show is on. You don't do the same on the internet.

How Much Would You Pay to Never See an Online Ad Again?

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