[fweespeech]

> It's insane. If companies are buying ad-space, it's because they expect to get more business in return. This means that someone out there is being influenced by said ads, so that if the content cost X to put up online (hosting, funding its creation), someone is paying X+(ad company overhead) for it.

Yes, and if you paid directly you'd have X+(B2C payment processing overhead) which is more than B2B.

> We could pay X for the content, and not incur the overhead.

That is really not true. Have you ever tried to support N customers instead of 20 businesses?

There are some very major costs in providing any kind of support, even if its just for billing.

You are simply unrealistic if you believe that ad companies have higher overhead than providing large scale customer support. I know someone who runs a [small] ad network and his overhead is a fraction of what it'd cost me to run a similar subscription based model.

[blacksmith_tb]

The micropayments could be handled via one of those 20 companies. For example, it would be fairly easy for Doubleclick to have users set up an account and fund it with a few bucks, and then they'd pay TechCrunch .01 USD when the user read an article. In effect it'd be a sort of protection racket, if you don't want see any ads, pay up.

[MisterBastahrd]

Which is why this will never be viable. Internet content providers are radio stations, not performers. They aren't going to Spotify themselves.

[fweespeech]

...and then its the same overhead because they are the ones collecting. You are just shifting who bears the cost of customer service.