[saimiam]

Like the old adage goes, they won't do this because their livelihood depends on it.

A single user can be exposed to 3-4 (or more) ads per page. Each ad can earn them some money depending on the relevance of the ad to the viewer. In this case, the price they charge the advertiser is more guesswork/auction than science. They don't have to/can't prove to anyone that the ad truly worked. Advertisers tweak and A/B test ads to achieve higher engagements and better results.

A fixed rate model like you're suggesting limits the scalability of selling the same pair of eyeballs to 3-4+ advertisers. It forces google and content creators to attach a hard number to each visitor which is essentially upper bound by people's spending habits - if people are feeling poor, they can simply stop visiting websites to make ends meet!

Fir these reasons, I don't believe any advertising based company is ever truly going to get behind pay-as-you-go content. I've made my bet (see my profile for deets aka FD) and I'm in the process of quitting my job to put my money where my mouth is.

[URSpider94]

I don't think these two approaches are diametrically opposed. In the traditional print journalism model, I pay for my copy of the newspaper/magazine, and I get a lot of ads -- most magazines are > 50% ad content by area. Even online, I am a subscriber to the NYTimes and WaPo -- I still get ads when I view the site. Paying does not turn off ads.

I am sure I'm in the majority on this site, but I believe that it's possible to do advertising-supported content in a tasteful way where the ads add to the experience, or at least do not detract from it.

[saimiam]

Print has a natural limit - you cannot expect to print and deliver unlimited sheets interspersed with ads. Websites can show you content from a decade ago with ads thrown in if the content is relevant to you. Print ads can be skipped far more easily that web ads.

With NYT and WaPo, your subscription is supposed to support quality journalism. The tradeoff that you're agreeing to - pay but also see ads - is not going to work for say a music subscription service or a stock tips service. My argument holds for those businesses. I'd say that WaPo, WSJ, and NYT are outliers, not the mainstream.

Tasteful ads:

Web advertising is so democratic that even the smallest company or startup can spend a few hundred dollars and get in front of you. Demanding tastefulness from such advertisers puts us as the risk of "corporatising" ads again, imho.

Anyway, I don't want to commandeer this conversation. I'd love to hear other opinions from HN.

[dreamcompiler]

Likewise cable TV. You pay for a subscription and you also see a lot of ads (more than on OTA TV, which is one of many reasons I cut the cord.) In the early days of cable networks, many had no ads because it was thought they could survive on subscription revenue. That idea didn't last long.

[saimiam]

As a whole, broadcast and cable TV is (used to be) a captive market. It was very possible for channels to synchronize or nearly synchronize their commercial breaks which meant that they could get away with charging for content AND showing ads.

The proof is that the minute add-ons like DVRs and set top boxes like Roku came along, the first thing people did was to bail on the old TV model.

[walterstucco]

Today's newspaper wraps tomorrow's fish.

Internet ads don't

[chii]

Thurs is why it shouldn't be an advertising company, but a brand-new company that should do this!

[saimiam]

Amen! And this is what we are trying to do with Datajoy.