[manigandham]

Not much. Here's how our (modern) ad network works:

New user seen, gets assigned random UUID like ABC12345. Show an ad based on what we know about site context.

Show ad, track that ABC12345 has seen this ad. Next time, we check your history and know to show you a different ad. If you click on anything, we see that as a signal that you perhaps like that category of ads.

Eventually we have a list of ads you've seen (to keep the frequency of those ads in check) and what categories you seem interested in (based on your clicks). Combine this with the context of the site and we can give you better ads. We DO NOT magically get your name, address, birthday, or any other personally identifiable information.

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Just for more detail: Facebook and Google are different. They are the biggest adtech players and own about 80% of the market not only because of their size but because of how much they know about you. Most people willingly tell both companies everything about their lives so they have a distinct advantage. They also know your identity across devices because of logins. These massive companies are a much much bigger privacy issue than any independent adtech company simply because independent players do not have access to all this detailed 1st party information (or it's provided through rough aggregated/statistical means).

[mirimir]

My point was that payments can be arbitrarily anonymous.

I'd prefer a micropayment system that was as automated as the current ad system is. Browsing a site would trigger an initial small payment. The total payment would be proportional to engagement, including the percentage of the article read, time spent on the site, links followed, and so on. There'd also be options to pay more, or to cancel payment.

I'm guessing that browsing would cost about $0.001, and that reading would cost between $.01 and $0.10 for average news articles, blog posts, etc. Magazine-length articles and reports would cost more. Is that about right to match typical ad income?

[manigandham]

Yea I mentioned this is my first post as time-based subscriptions would be perhaps the ideal instead of micropayments. The amounts you quoted are pretty fair.

The most scalable payments option is typical credit cards or bank transfers, which obviously come with identity information. Perhaps there can be an option for bitcoin but it's definitely not ready today. No company would deal with that at scale.

[mirimir]

Why not gift cards? Gyft and eGifter both accept Bitcoin. And numerous businesses accept gift cards, including Apple and Amazon, and many chains.

[manigandham]

Sure, you're right, we can reframe this and just say you're buying prepaid credit cards using cash/bitcoin. That could take care of the payment info anonymity. Not sure of scalability for mainstream but it could work.

The remaining issues of scale/tech remain though which is still a big problem.