I think the primary argument line is something along:
1. Online ads today are so bad they must be blocked
2. But blocking ads blocks revenue for sites we like
3. So we should pay for them more directly
4. But I'm not about to set up 100 different monthly subscriptions. These corporations are not trustworthy and I cannot monitor this many bills.
5. We need a solution to simplify money -> content -> creator transfer
6. There's been many attempts at that, but there's too many players who want the power and control that comes with wedging themselves in between consumers and creators.
Same. But I think that once you've screwed the pooch this bad, you can't just take a single step backwards and expect everyone to be fine with that. The trust is gone. You've got to reboot and rebrand somehow.
The problem is that the advertising companies wanted the offline marketing spend so much that they started selling the dream of tracking with specificity, which caused marketeers the world over to finally have an answer to the age old 'I don't know which half I spend wrong' question.
Advent of Code does a great job at this. Its ads are text-based, relevant, and unintrusive. Of course, it has a pretty particular aesthetic, but plenty of sites could do a simple (non-animated) image or text to surface their sponsor without being annoying.
Shameless plug: this is what we are trying to do at https://contextcue.com. Ads that are targeted to the website you’re on, instead of the person viewing the ad. We’d love any feedback about what we are trying to accomplish!
1. Online ads today are so bad they must be blocked
2. But blocking ads blocks revenue for sites we like
3. So we should pay for them more directly
4. But I'm not about to set up 100 different monthly subscriptions. These corporations are not trustworthy and I cannot monitor this many bills.
5. We need a solution to simplify money -> content -> creator transfer
6. There's been many attempts at that, but there's too many players who want the power and control that comes with wedging themselves in between consumers and creators.
7. So we're stuck.