Stances like this probably feel good to write out, but they miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. People won’t pay $5 a day to subscribe to a newspaper, but the ads subsidize enough of it to make it so that a paid subscription is accessible to more people.<p>On the internet, the fact is this: Most companies do not offer a reduced ad load in exchange for your subscription money. In fact, they will be happy to take money from every source they can. The fact that The Verge is doing so reflects that they understand their audience and are trying to meet them halfway. It also reduces the cost of the subscription for you, the end user.<p>This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it.
It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. Hence the cuts. Same on Youtube. I watch a lot of content there while maintaining zero interruptions by ads. Works great and so far I've never had to pay Youtube to not see ads. I do pay for Amazon Prime. Occasionally. I usually reactivate my subscription when I need it either because I'm ordering stuff or because they have something I want to see. I'll cancel soon again because I don't currently need them and I once again exhausted their limited offerings. Forced ad watching makes it less likely I come back.<p>I don't pay any websites/blogs for subscriptions for articles either. It's not sustainable for me to do pay for all the websites I visit. And me randomly paying only some tiny subset of them doesn't make any sense to me. I'd need some prioritized list. And it would have to be a very short one because I'm simply not rich enough to maintain lots of multi dollar subscriptions per month. And I also don't want to micromanage a lot of payments and subscriptions.<p>The Verge, which was mentioned in the article is a good example of a website that I don't value enough to get anywhere near that short list. They have a lot of competition reporting more or less similar stuff that I wouldn't miss them. In fact, I can't recall reading anything by them lately. I guess not a lot of their stuff makes it to the HN front page. Probably because it's just not that interesting.
> The correct amount of ads for a publication that’s directly supported is zero.<p>I basically agree with this sentiment, but one place where it can be a tricky balance (not saying that's the case here!) is "native advertising".<p>For example, a new game is being released, the publisher collaborates with TheBrink, a hypothetical popular game news site, and for this they get a huge takeover banner advert for the week, increased placement on ad units around the site, a "behind the scenes" post written about the game, and an interview with the developers published to TheBrink's YouTube channel. This type of package is absolutely a thing that gets sold.<p>Which bits of this are ads? Well the behind the scenes post and interview could theoretically have been produced anyway, they're within the scope of the site, but in this case they weren't prioritised, certainly not for launch day, it was only by the whole collaboration being paid for that they got made. Are they ads? Yes they are ads. How would a loyal subscriber feel about those parts being hidden from them though? I imagine they would be miffed about that.<p>Native advertising like this has a whole spectrum of quality and the worst native ads are very explicitly ads that have no value to typical readers. However "good" native ads are really just a company paying for priority reporting in the style that would otherwise be done anyway, and are probably content that readers/viewers want.<p>How do you resolve this? No idea. If I were paying I'd want to see that content assuming it's good quality. Others would not on the basis of bias or a more philosophical opposition to ads.
Advertising is fundamentally corrosive to society and should be outlawed with few and carefully tailored exceptions. Any business models that consequently fail, fail because their externalities to collective society are now priced in.
The correct amount of <i>tracking</i> ads at least. We always paid for magazines and newspapers and saw ads despite paying. But then the transaction was between the publisher and the advertiser, and MY information wasn't sold. They were dumb ads.<p>If I pay for online content it's NOT for the content itself (obviously not, in the case of freemium), it's in order to not have to pay with my personal information. I want to pay with money. But if I'm shown tracking and precisely targeted ads despite paying, that feels like I'm being charged twice. So the article is right: the amount of ads, at least if you consider tracking, must be zero.
Disagree. Would I like zero ads? Yes, do I think a company should be required to offer a zero ad service for money? No. If you don't like that they have ads even if you pay then don't use the service.<p>People still subscribe to newspaper even though they are full of ads. They paid money, they got an ad full paper. People still subscribe to cable TV even though it's full of ads. People still buy magazines (paid for them) that are full of ads. International flights have ads on their entertainment. Flights by some airlines I've been on have ads just after the safety instructions. I've been on flights where they have ads for shopping while on the plane.
I was hoping this would be about society at large.<p>It's ridiculous the amount of money spent, people's time spent, all on a quest to make the world an uglier and more hostile place.
People (at least used to) pay for magazines and newspapers, which have also been partially supported by ads forever. Perhaps a more sustainable balance would be only first-party ads (ie no individualized tracking) for paying subscribers?
The correct amount of ads is one.<p>As an <i>indie web</i> developer, after trying many "ad policies", I believe the sweet spot (not the revenue optimal spot!) is one ad, clear, not intrusive and highly targetted to your audience. This ad will not annoy readers and will keep your motivation at a decent level (instead of a zero ads policy).<p>My take: <a href="https://www.slowernews.com/sponsor" rel="nofollow">https://www.slowernews.com/sponsor</a>
That’s why I unsubscribed to NYT. The ads weren’t just annoying, they were distracting. Shoved directly between paragraphs and impossible to hide. When I canceled, I told them why.
While I agree with the post author on the "if I pay the subscription then there should be no ads" part, there is a bit that comes fairly often in such posts which I find rather funny: "sell my data to your advertisers"<p>Sorry, that's not how 90% of digital advertising works. The company doesn't sell your data, they just offer some other companies to put an ad in front of your screen based on some specific profiling.<p>But these ads companies don't receive a file called "Manuel Moreale personal data and shopping history"
To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple.<p>The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, and I think <i>that's a very good thing,</i> and many people underappreciate the extend to which it happens.<p>On that note, I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets, even though it's basically the same thing and a very similar business model.
Don't work in ads, never did, don't make money from them.<p>I don't mind ads one bit, except video unskipable ones. I find stuff to buy there all the time, or discover new tools, sometimes I'll buy an equivalent thing years later that I remember I found first in an ad.<p>If I want to research competitors to something, I just google the something and click the ads.<p>And I also like that I like something that makes so many people pissed off.
Amazon prime video is also double dipping now. So annoying!<p>And they have the cheek to say ‘your program will resume uninterrupted’. You literally just interrupted it!<p>It’s like slapping someone in the face and then smugly exclaiming ‘and that’s the end of the slaps - you must be so happy, right?’
>you don’t get to double dip and also sell my data to your advertisers and earn more on the side.<p>1. Placing an Ad on the page has absolutely <i>nothing</i> to do with selling your data. Just like a magazine decide to place a print ad.<p>2. Ad can sometimes function as news. New Product launch, marketing notes. etc.<p>3. Even an <i>internet targeting</i> Ad, which the author is likely referring to, <i>does not</i> necessarily sell your data to advertiser. Your data, however may likely be gathered elsewhere that the Ad company uses for targeting.<p>4. There is no such thing as double dip when your data isn't even involved. Which means you are only paying once. And not twice.<p>5. Placing an Ad, an additional revenue generation function on the site is not double dipping. Even if the ad is inside your subscription. You are free to cancel or sue if the subscription originally promised zero ads.<p>6. The correct amount of ads is when Ad does not feel like an ad. The answer is very likely to be non zero but minimal.<p>Final Note: I Notice HN has swing back enough to allow decent discussions on these sort of topics. Ads were nearly forbidden to talk about from 2013 - 2023.
My biggest frustration right now is paying for Spotify and not getting any ads in music, but getting ads in podcasts. Not even just the ads embedded in the audio stream, which I can understand Spotify can't do much about, but Spotify actively injecting more ads into the shows.
I get the anti-advertisement sentiment, and when it comes to most every flavor of online advertising, I agree. But, once upon a time, ads blended seamlessly with the content. Or, at least had the potential to.<p>I used to subscribe to XLR8R and Thrasher magazine. The ads were tailored to the content of the magazine (electronic music and skateboarding, respectively). Thus, completely relevant to the interest of the reader.<p>I'm not sure how folks would emulate that online without heavy curation. But, I can't remember feeling any negativity towards ads while reading those magazines. If anything I was glad to be informed about a new skate video or music release.
It’s not though. Any party is free to shape their offering the way they want. And any other party is free to accept the deal, or not.<p>That said, paying AND >0 ads (or tracking) is also a no no for me.
I have no issue paying for the content, but I don't want to have to give over all of my personal data to do it. I want to be able to have an experience analogous to walking into 7-11 and buying a newspaper with cash. I'm tired of everyone everywhere thinking they are entitled to my personal info because I am a consumer of their product.
15 years ago regular site used to have a nice banner ad that was related to the topic of the site, maybe some small logo here and there on the right side and that was about it<p>I did not think about blocking it, did not mind, did not care. That's how ads should have stayed instead of this giant annoying/spyware/loud/popup/... mess.
Nowadays I would not use anything without ublock and i am considering storing everything locally so I dont have to visit most websites and only scrape the news.<p>It's especially sad since back in the day making a website, having a webserver etc. was vastly more expensive and difficult while these days it costs literally less than 10$ / month for something that can handle millions of views.<p>How is it possible that something was sustainable 20 years ago is not sustainable now?
That the precise reason I won’t even get the paid subscription of any service that also exists with ads - they will still get as much data as possible and sell it even if you pay the subscription.<p>If there is no way to hide ads completely I won’t use your service full stop
This is one of those things where interests of the consumer are at odds with that of the business. Businesses need money, customers have money. Customers do not always want to pay the businesses directly. This issue is more obvious when it comes to news media. We don't have a good solution to pay $0.01 - $0.10 or whatever small denomination. The other question is would we even want to?<p>I don’t think Freemium or whatever subscription model solves these problems beyond the scope of a single website. I am interested to hear how this can be solved for consumers for whole swaths of websites that have ads.<p>It’s pretty easy to say ads are evi, but I personally don’t know a good solution.
> The correct amount of ads for a publication that’s directly supported is zero<p>You are not the only one directly supporting the publication<p>> you don’t get to double dip and also sell my data to your advertisers and earn more on the side<p>Yes they do. You get the option to cancel.
Rather than focus on zero ads, I would like to see better ads and better ad targeting.<p>Lately many ads, are for things I HATE, and advertising them makes me not want to watch the content I really want, if there is ads I actively hate. Government ads in particular I find offensive.<p>But it seems wild that the ad targeting is so bad.<p>I ride a bike and am anti-car, so stop giving me ads for cars and trucks, I will never buy.<p>I don't think Ive had a video game ad in years, but outside of food and rent, games and tech is one of my biggest budget line items.<p>Why is advertising so bad? They spend too much money on the technology and data to target consumers.
I wonder how much it costs The Verge to run their platform, and how much they need subscribers to pay to stay profitable.<p>The fence part is that when we were paying for newspaper subscriptions, they still were chock full of ads. It's just that they tended to be relegated to entire pages or sections that weren't obnoxious.<p>Maybe there's something different about how we peruse online content vs paper that makes us annoyed at digital and not paper ads... I will say that website ads have become so obtrusive and in the way and distracting that I'm just turned off to them.
I don’t get why advertisers still advertise. I select brands either by nearest retail box store or by dedicated research into comparative qualities. I don’t watch or listen to any advertising-supported video or audio media. I don’t use personalized or targeted promotion codes. I don’t ever knowingly click on banner/interstitial ads of any kind.<p>Am I still in the minority or has my behavior become more prevalent?<p>(Note that I’m not talking about adblockers; I’m talking about refusing to interact with ads, whether due to no adblocker or due to not being caught for whatever reason.)
One big issue is that even if they take ads out they make whole articles ads.<p>I would pay a fair amount for an ad free news source that has a first rate editorial staff that simply prints the news.
Ads make people desire stuff that they don't need. The goal is to make you unhappy. It is the opposite of help, the opposite of happiness.<p>Ads are also a great enforcer of gender and sexual identification by stereotyping and categorizing in order to target audiences. Hairstyle, toys, tools, colour, food, behaviour, everything. I blame ads for identification crises of countless souls, and for toxic human environments and for hate as people internalize stereotypes and categories. We need less enforcement to identify. We need more 'it does not matter'.<p>Yes, the correct amount of ads is zero.
I'd pay a lot per month if I wouldn't have to care which subscriptions I need and could just access everything.<p>I wouldn't pay a lot for any particular service that I'd just use only once or twice per month.
I only ever read "the verge" if it is linked from HN or somewhere else. A subscription just doesn't make sense for me.
The problem is that eventually, AI will get so powerful that it will block all ads on the client without anyway of detecting it. Adblockers today are very basic and have no understanding of the mind that is consuming the content. We must adapt and create new business models.
X / Twitter does the same: the first paid tier only remove <i>some</i> ads, not all of them. And I don't think that's good.<p>Now there's one way to pay to get way less ads: pay for an AI model and replace a huge percentage of your searches with searches inside the model. They're not bad at that. That's why many are saying that Google is (partially) in trouble with LLMs: wife and I definitely are searching less using search engines than we used too.<p>Besides that I'm running a local DNS server with a brutal blocklist: nearly one million of <i>wildcarded</i> domains (unbound supports wildcards). I block entire TLDs too. Entire countries' IP blocks. Add uBlock origin to the mix and your life becomes pretty ad-free.<p>I'm glad to pay a subscription for an AI model that doesn't serve me <i>any</i> ad. But I won't pay for something that serves me less ads, but still some ads. As simple as that.<p>You want me to pay: serve me zero ad.
Agree fully. I got livid when traveling in a business class long haul flight with the Lufthansa Group, and was forced to watch ads on the screen in front of me. No option to turn the screen of (which was later enabled, during the flight).<p>It's several years and I still remember this.
Blame consumers for this. If a company sells a service for $10/mo ad-free and $9/mo completely loaded with ads, most people will pick the latter plan. Why won't they offer it then?
So, like Mediapart does? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediapart" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediapart</a>
Even though i hate ads as much as most commenters… as advocate of the devil:<p>This black-and-white thinking [1] is also bad. What’s the point if they show 0 ads, subscription price will then have to go up to cover the costs, and nobody signs up so they go bankrupt. They also have to be able to survive in the current world/reality, even if they WANT to show 0 ads.<p>My point is: we don’t have any insight in their financial data/revenue/costs.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)</a>
We live in democracies. Some of us don't want ads. So can we have X% of time when there are no ads? We can start with 1 month, e.g. ad-free February.
dude that article calendar is sick! I wish all the bloggers actually did something like that. I dont want to scroll 400 pages into the archive to find something interesting i may have missed
Historically there have always been ads in paid news media (look at the newspapers, they have had ads in print since almost their inception) so I don’t think there is anything out of the ordinary here…<p>I.e. for paid print media the ‘correct’ amount of ads is almost definitely non-zero from the publishers perspective.<p>(Personally I’m not too bothered about ads in a paid online website as long as they aren’t excessive or intrusive but people may disagree and can vote with their wallets)
Personally, I think the correct amount of subscription fee is zero and ads should be zero too. It’s unethical to charge for information you have that could improve someone else’s life. It’s near zero marginal cost to give it to them and you’re just going to hoard it?<p>We should ban paying for information at the federal level to prevent this horrific practice.
Look, I'm not an ad aficionado either, but if it weren't for ads, the lifestyle of a lot of people on HN would be dramatically different — particularly for those doling out unsolicited advice to publishers on running a sustainable media business in 2024.
I hate that we still are talking about this. Ads suck, and there's already a better way to do things.<p>Micropayments are the answer. Everyone on the internet pays a small monthly fee, say $5/month (ideally this would just be integrated into your internet bill), and every piece of content you view streams tiny amounts of that fee to whatever content you are viewing. The actual amount sent is based on your monthly usage, and never goes over that $5/month cap. People who browse less send more.<p>A webextension tested this years ago & it was sweet. Businesses could be sustainable on there own, no ads, no data selling. If you have viewers, you have currency. But, it wasn't a seamless experience so it didn't take off.<p>Make no mistake: This is the best possible way to fund the open web, which is exactly why Google pretends it doesn't exist. If chrome had this feature built in & people never had to think about it, ads would drop to near 0 incredibly fast. Google says no.<p>We are doomed to have an enshittified web because the powers that be won't integrate sustainable funding mechanisms.
This is a bad take. Ads are not the problem. Behavioural ads with suriveillance and data economy is. Static ads or contextual ads are the answer. Some of the best examples I can think of on the top of my head is duckduckgo.com and <a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" rel="nofollow">https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/</a><p>Paywall doesn't stop data surveillance. All the news sites have become paywalled because ads revenue dried up because people installing ad blockers and are more aware of privacy. But now, not only don't they not provide content for free, but also make you pay and collect your data as well.<p>- Go to most of the major news sites in firefox.<p>- Install noscript extension<p>- See the bizillion scripts that loads.<p><i>Note: You can load all these scripts indirectly with google tag manager or platforms like cloudflare zaraz etc. So you won't even directly see the analytics script that is loaded in a website. Just google tag manager etc.</i><p>Ads are a good way to make revenue when it is done right. Behavioural ads makes it the worst it the problem we should be solving. It makes sense from the business POV as well. You cut the middlemen like facebook and google and get paid premium directly. You curate the ads for your product/website. People want to just plug in an api call and generate money. That won't fly anymore with users being aware.
It's a great move by the Verge but I agree with the article that it doesn't go far enough.<p>Why not offer a premium ad-free tier?<p>For me, viewing web ads is non negotiable (print ads were much more manageable and didn't prevent me from enjoying the content).<p>However I only view about 4-6 Verge articles per month so I'll see how it plays out. If the best stuff goes behind a paywall then I can't justify subscribing, and nor do I want to hand over personal data to every site I read occasionally (for several reasons).<p>I've always wondered why publishers can't follow the Spotify or Netflix model for at least some of their content?<p>This does also raise the uncomfortable question of how much the content is worth. Yes they have some exclusives and unique content but in other areas if I stopped reading it I'd have another hundred reviews of the latest Apple products to choose from, and Reddit is much more realistic (albeit noisy) about the Sonos debacle than The Verge. The article about undersea cables was good though.
How does a paywalled full-text RSS feed even work? Yeah, I get it, RSS itself can work with auth tokens. But I use a service like Feedly to maintain my RSS subscriptions, and managed RSS services will cache the response to a single RSS feed for multiple subscribers. The Verge trusts Feedly to not abuse the paywall mechanism?<p>I mean, I definitely like full-text RSS when it's available, but even summary-only RSS is good enough for me. 99% of the value is in not needing to go to a bajillion sites manually to see what's new, and avoiding the eye-grabbing behavior of these sites when doing so.
Dear friends!
I am a simple programmer. I had a website in 2009, where I posted useful articles. I had a small ad block, which allowed me to pay for my expenses. When users began to install ad blockers en masse, the number of ad views dropped significantly and I had to close the site. Now I have no job and I am very poor. I want to thank those people who not only do not want to pay for good service, but also install ad blockers. Now you say that there is nothing to find on the Internet. Who will do something for you for free? Maybe a taxi driver will take you for free?