News Mozilla teases $4.99 'ad-free experience' subscription

How does the ad system work in general? Do you get paid just for displaying ads or do people have to click through them for you to be paid?
I seem to remember reading that Chrome etc, when using adblockers, only hid the advert and didn't actually block them unlike Firefox. Of course that could have been BS but assuming that's the case how is it determined that the ads are blocked in Chrome.

I think the number of times I've clicked on an advert on purpose could be counted on both hands tbh, but I do disable my adblock for Bit-Tech because the ads here are fine. Though I don't like the full background ads that hide what I feel is part of Bit-Techs design.

 

If users don't want ads, how many are going to pay $60 per year, rather than use a free adblocker?

 

It varies depending on the website, ad network and advertiser.
But the outcome is always the same:
The site gets almost nothing because there are far too many websites all undercutting each other in the fight to attract advertisers.

 

Lest anyone forget, it is not the website/content publishers themselves that tend to be hoovering up the data or causing privacy and security concerns, it is the advertising networks themselves (who sell the data).

The answer is to sort out the advertising networks, not shuffle the proverbial deckchairs by forcing websites to change. Sadly I don't think that will happen, ergo people will continue to block adverts (it's all about trust) and the advertisers golden goose (popular content producing websites) will either close or be forced to change their business model.

 

Cheers @Gareth Halfacree and @Anfield.

It'd be good if websites gave users the options of what to see IMO. I'd imagine a lot of people now have adblockers installed, specifically of the s***y adverts some websites have.
I'd much rather specify I just want static adverts and disable my adblock than either
a) attempt to figure out how to block everything but static ads - which I won't do coz I'm lazy
or
b) just block everything.

Oddly enough, I've just seen an advert on the front page stating a free corsair commander pro with qualifying purchases and am unable to click on it nor was any more info given that I could see. Something that could benefit @modd1uk since he'll be doing a build with corsair stuff soon.

 

Some people don't want ads, but also realise (and sympathise with) the fact that someone gotta pay for all this ****. They might be willing to pay for an ad free experience especially if it's affordable, far-reaching and convenient.

 

Well, Kitguru started a Patreon back in march, they get ~$70 a month (before fees) from 24 backers.
Now to be fair that isn't to make the site ad free but it doesn't exactly paint a rosy picture when it comes to the idea of alternative funding for tech sites...

 

I don't block ads on this site but I can say I honestly never notice them.

 

All really boils down to whether that model supports a revenue per user that is comparible to doing it the advertising way. For example, Mail Online generates allegedly about 50p per user per year. That's fine when you have their scale (well actually not fine as it should be much higher) but those numbers don't add up for smaller publishers.

It's certainly a struggle for websites to generate the revenue required to keep the quality of editorial up. It's about using multiple models all at the same time to keep the cash coming in.

Personally i wouldn't sign up to it but I've worked in advertising for publishers for over 15 years so understand the need for the revenue advertising generates.

The biggest gain for the consumer isn't not seeing ads though. It's the speed at which things will then load when you don't have real time bidding for which ad shows and you're not waiting for the ad server to then send the creative etc.

 

50p per user per year?

Sounds like someone "forgot" to fix the bug in the user count

 

It's not a lot is it. In perspective, the Daily Mail newspaper generates about £250 per user per year as they have both cover price revenue and advertising.

 

Oh of course and that is revenue per user.

 

I should point out that I wasn't condoning ad-blocking, just that using a free ad-blocker is what a great many users will do, rather than pay.

 

Tbh I expect this to be about as sucessful and/or popular as Google's attempt, Contribute or whatever it was called.

 

So how does Bit's ad revenue work? Should we be clicking the sh*t out of them, clicking and fiddling around on their site a bit, or just not blocking them?