[hammerzeit]

There's already an internet-scale mechanism to avoid seeing ads while ensuring that publishers are compensated for the content they're creating -- it's the very ad exchanges that show us all the terrible ads we see. All you'd need to do is set up a pixel retargeting yourself, match it against the exchanges, and then bid an uncapped amount against it while displaying a blank creative.

Admittedly this won't block 100% of ads, closer to 50-60%, although it would most likely block all of the worst offenders. Likely net cost would be in the $1-$3/day range, distributed amongst the sites you patronize. And, again, all of the infrastructure to do this already exists. You wouldn't need to do deals with publishers or anything like that.

I've always wondered why nobody's created this yet; I've always assumed it's because people using ad blockers would not actually pay for an ad-free experience. Other ideas?

[niravshah]

I think Adieu (https://www.adieu.io/) is attempting something like this.

[dcgoss]

Checked out Adieu, it does sound very much like what he/she described.

[falcolas]

So long as I'm only targeting and paying for myself, this is a fantastic idea. Just need a how-to for folks who are not inoculated in the ad culture; most of your instructions were inscrutable to me.

[dexen]

I love this idea, and would be more than happy if Project Wonderful [1] provided such functionality for end-users. Oh the joy of being micro-patron of my favourite comics :)

[1] https://www.projectwonderful.com/ ; they serve ads on several popular webcomics

[icebraining]

You're talking about paying $400-$1000 per year, not exactly peanuts. Do advertisers really pay that much for each average user?