Another Look at Online Advertising
Linked by David Adams on Fri 19th Mar 2010 21:07 UTC
OSNews, Generic OSes Online advertising has been a hot topic for the past week or so, with Ars Technica trying out an interesting, somewhat desperate experiment wherein they blocked access to their content for people using Adblock. Of course, if this were to become some kind of movement among publishers, it would probably just spark a technological cat-and-mouse game that would surely be reminiscent of DRM cracking or iPhone jailbreaking. But in their post-mortem, Ars states that it was a worthwhile awareness campaign, and I hope that's true. But I thought it would be a good idea to try to bring the collective OSNews brainpower together and crowdsource the idea of how to raise money for a web site in an age where advertising is increasingly un-viable.
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RE[2]: Comment by Kroc
by Kroc on Sat 20th Mar 2010 00:21 UTC in reply to "RE: Comment by Kroc"
Kroc
Member since:
2005-11-10

Would Ars' content be any worse if they simply put up a pay wall? No, I don't think it would. Would Ars' content be any worse if the community wasn't there? Hard to say, but Ars doesn't strike me as a community website. The comments section is only just above Engadget.

"You can't view our content unless you view our ads!" is not exactly community thinking.

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I could imagine an Ars without the community quite easily (I hide the comments by default), but I couldn't imagine an OSnews without the community; it'd be really empty.

Edited 2010-03-20 00:31 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[3]: Comment by Kroc
by David on Sat 20th Mar 2010 03:44 in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Kroc"
David Member since:
1997-10-01

Would Ars' content be any worse if they simply put up a pay wall?


It would be infinitely worse, because paywalls don't work, only a hardcore few will pay, and they would make a small fraction of what they earn from ads, then swiftly go out of business.

Reply Parent Score: 1