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by wizzwizz4 2042 days ago
Would you pay a small amount for those ads?
2 comments

Why would I pay for targeted ads? You mean because I find them useful? I assume they're more useful to the advertisers than to me. I am willing to not get paid by them since I find them useful.
I think the parent question is interesting... you say you derive value from them, so it's somewhat conspicuous and seemingly arbitrary (rather than intentional, or calculated) that you've happened upon exactly $0.00 as the value to you, rather than negative (you'd like no ads unless you're being paid to compensate for the pain, loss of privacy, etc.) or positive (because you enjoy them and derive value out of them as a discovery service)...
Many things end up at exactly $0.00 because the transaction costs (handling payments, dealing with refunds, reporting taxes, etc.) exceed whatever value the thing has.

This is part of the reason why so many things are ad-supported to begin with -- even if someone is willing to pay $0.03 to read a random article, there's no effective way to collect that.

Pretend the payment is on a yearly basis for this hypothetical, then. With micropayment fees, making anything 25 cents and up viable.
I don't think jedberg said anything that implies the value is exactly $0.00.

Rather, jedberg has already found way more suppliers than he needs, all willing to supply him ads at $0.00, which makes that the equilibrium price.

Analogously, I would value oxygen basically infinitely high because I don't want to die. However, I would never pay for it because I can easily get it for free, and would laugh at anyone who tried to charge me for permission to breathe.

I think it's difficult in general for people to put a price on most of the things they get for free, just because they're used to getting them for free, and build their price intuitions on being able to get them for free.

OP is already paying for them by buying the products they sell.