A New Alternative to Ads

                On the internet, ads have become a [core] part of the average user experience.  Not only do we see them on almost every website we visit, but companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter collect user information to sell to advertisers.  This business model is hugely profitable, resulting in the massive growth of these companies, along with an increase in the number of advertisements us users encounter on a daily basis.

                Many internet users have not taken kindly to the productization of their personal information, and have taken measures to avoid advertisements.  Some users have chosen to avoid web services that display ads.  Others have chosen to limit that ads that can be showed to them by limiting the amount of information that websites are able to collect on them.  Most importantly, tools such as Adblock have become a popular way to prevent ads from appearing at all.  The tools intercept standard web traffic before it is displayed in your browser and strips advertiser content from the source code, allowing users to visit almost any page ad-free.

                Obviously, because content providers earn money when users see and interact with ads, ad blocking software has cause a decrease in profit for them.  However, Google recently announced a program that would allow users to visit pages ad-free while still allowing content creators to earn money.  The Contributor program allows users to pay a subscription of $1 to $3 a month in exchange for hiding advertisements that Google serve on participating websites.  The program would allow those content creators and hosts to still earn money for the service they provide without interfering with the user’s experience.

                Many web services have embraced this type of ad-alternative in recent years.  Free Android and iOS applications frequently offer paid versions that hide advertisements so that developers can afford to continue updating their applications, and the model has been very successful.  Allowing users the opportunity to change how they view their media, instead of forcing every user to view content that they may not want to see makes a lot of sense.  Music hosting services like Spotify, Songza, and Pandora have proven this with their own subscription services – the majority of users would prefer to pay a monthly subscription to access content instead of pirating the music they are interested in.

                Such a big move away from advertisements, however, hasn’t been tried before.  Google has one of the biggest advertising platforms in the industry, and if websites that use the platform decide to join Google’s program, we could see a huge shift in how internet companies make money.  Giving users the ability to choose will not only improve our own experiences, but allow companies to grow and innovate in ways that they haven’t in the past few years.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/google-launches-subscription-service-for-the-internet-to-replace-ad-revenue-online-9874758.html