Comment by rglullis
1 month ago
If people are willing to consume content but not willing to pay for it, then you have a very strong indicator it has no value at all and therefore no actual need to be produced in the first place.
1 month ago
If people are willing to consume content but not willing to pay for it, then you have a very strong indicator it has no value at all and therefore no actual need to be produced in the first place.
People willing to pay by consuming ads are indicating the content is worth that price - to them. The fact such people exist is proved by the fact such sites exist.
This is not how it works. Ad-subsidized content is functionally equivalent to price-dumping. The more ad-subsidized content is out there, the less incentive there is to focus on quality and quantity of eyeballs become the only metric that matters.
On the contrary, content quality is a major driver of ad revenue.
1 reply →
Or at least, not enough subjective value for that person to outweigh the cost. Paywalls are a great screening filter that actually tests if people want to spend any money or time on an article, or merely clicked through from force of habit.
So? Ads are a screening filter that tests if people want to spend time consuming ads to consume content.
What's odd is when people here complain of screening by ads because they'd think screening should instead be by money. It is proper that the choce for the publisher's site is made by the publisher and for the reader's visits is made by the reader.