[ryandvm]

The problem is that nobody is asking the actual market value of their product. TechCrunch would probably want subscribers to pay north of $5/month. But the actual marketing value (in ad revenue) that they are currently able to extract from a single reader is probably closer to $0.50/year - if that.

You solve the micropayment problem and then we can talk about what I'm willing to pay for content.

[eevilspock]

Mozilla Research put the entire web's advertising revenue at $12.70/month per user[1]. In other words, if they are right we are living with the consequences of advertising for a mere $13/month, $13 dollar they still get from us anyway because it's baked into the prices of the advertised products.

> You solve the micropayment problem

We hackers and technologists here at HN are the "You".

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera

As I put it here a couple of weeks ago[2]:

You're putting all the responsibility on the consumer, and none on us, the technologists, the so-called innovators. Where are our innovative powers to come up with alternate busniness models? Where are our backbones to stand up against selling out the internet so that we can get rich quick?

Because that is what the advertising business model is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that?

The saddest thing about Hacker News is that we all get behind radical things like FOSS (Bill Gates called it un-American) and Snowden, and fight SOPA and NSA violations of privacy, but because too many of our salaries depend on advertising revenue, our cognitive dissonance blinders go up lightning fast.

-

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8586294

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961761

[Merovius]

> In other words, if they are right we are living with the consequences of advertising for a mere $13/month, $13 dollar they still get from us anyway because it's baked into the prices of the advertised products.

I am sorry, but I can not understand what's the problem with that. I can put out my content for free, everyone, regardles of economic situation can consume it. Prices will increase accordingly, but it won't affect everyone equally. The food you need to put on your table to survive, your electricity and your water doesn't have as large a chunk in the advertising budget as the latest iPhone, Macbook or random technology product. So at the absolute worst, the people buying luxury products subsidize people who wouldn't be able to afford my content otherwise. What's so bad about that?

Another implicit assumption that is very questionable for me as a non-economist is: The overhead the advertising company gets doesn't disappear. In general money doesn't disappear. It gets spent on the employees of the ad-company, which increases spending power and is good for the economy (?). It's a bit like energy. The amount is mostly constant, it's the fact that we move it around that creates value. The absolut worst you can do with your money, is not spending it. Because it can't create value like that.

[maxerickson]

Why assume there would be less overhead without the ads?

With ads, there is also probably less friction visiting unknown sites; clicking to a site with too many ads and then just closing it is probably a better experience than knowing you blew $0.05 on crap content (I'm not saying getting frustrated about $0.05 makes sense, I'm saying it will probably happen).

[eevilspock]

You and dragonwriter are missing my point about innovation, and also greatly underestimate the overhead cost of the advertising-publisher industrial complex.

[maxerickson]

I didn't make an estimate, I asked you to justify your assertion.

[dragonwriter]

> Mozilla Research puts the entire web's advertising revenue at $12.70/month per users[1]. This means that is the most we'd have to pay on average if could just pay directly (and in fact less if because all the overhead and externalities go away).

Direct payments have overhead and externalities (aide from simply payment processing overhad, consider that instead of providing content to all comers with accompanying ads, content providers have to have paywalls -- to stop the content from getting taken for free -- and find some way of promoting content to those who haven't yet paid to convince them to pay for it.) Neither the paywalls nor the promotional efforts are free of cost.