Forum Moderators: open
Yahoo, whose fortunes depend on selling online advertising, could some day offer versions without ads, its chief executive Terry Semel said.
Bottom line: Somebody has got to pay for it. But, I still think the classic ad & subscription model holds the most value to the publisher and reader, both.
The trick is how to offer the reader value they'll pay for and still be on the web to have enough traffic for marketers. If you want to see a good example, look at the free WSJ.com. You actually get a lot of news at zero cost, but after a while you get frustrated that you can't see this or that. So, like me, you subscribe.
Another good example is WebmasterWorld. Lots of good free forums, but they you see a discussion that you would love to read and, ack!, it's behind a tollgate.
But, I still think the classic ad & subscription model holds the most value to the publisher and reader, both.
That could be true for search engines or self-contained sites in areas like community and news/entertainment, but if applied extensively, it would compromise the value and go against the fundamental principles of the Web. (The Web was founded on the premise that users could navigate freely among hypertext documents on servers throughout the world. Remove that advantage, and you might as well go back to the days of commercial databases and proprietary online serivces like AOL and CompuServe.)
In any case, subscriptions don't work for sites that derive much or most of their traffic from new or occasional visitors. If I'm thinking of adopting a wire-haired fox terrier and I look up "fox terriers" in Google, it's unlikely that I'll want to subscribe to furry-foxy-friends.com just so I can learn if a wire-hair is right for me. And if a vacationer is thinking of a trip to Timbuktu, it's hard to imagine him subscribing to timbuktu-for-travelers.com (especially sight unseen) unless he plans to go there on a regular basis.
The best example I can think of is educational television. No ads ... poor content ... few supporters. Or, does this sort of TV still exist? ... haven't checked in the past ten years.
bbc in the UK
Yahoo guy: "Maybe charge subscribers to view 'ad-free' personalized PFI SERPS?"
That sounds a lot like an article I posted here about AOL planning to dump google for a "cul-de-sac" type search solution which keeps more of their users enslaved within their walls.
I can't find it so I guess it did not get past the filters.
Seems that just about everyone Larry King interviews on CNN has a book to announce, or a political agenda, or a new album to release. Yet millions of people tune into CNN don't they?
Hey folks, commercialization is a big part of our lives, no matter how you cut the cake. It's just a matter of how you decide to disguise it, or expose it, as the case may be.
Ad-free Internet? Ha!
10% of users said they would pay about £20 a year but 90% would not pay a thing, so we did not bother.
Thinking about this a bit more users already pay to get on the internet and if say the 2 big boys MSN & Yahoo start to do subscription this is more money people will have to pay out then if the 1000's of content based sites on the net started it users will have to pay a fortune.
What might be an idea is that the advertising networks such as 24-7realmedia, burst etc offer a subscription service to its network of sites, this means one point of payment for access to larger number of sites.
Look at T.V. users would only want to pay one monthly payment for cable sat etc, not individual payments etc...there are exceptions to this rule but in the internet world might these exception be MSN & Yahoo?
John
