Content vs Ads | TechTree.com

Content vs Ads

Pay for what you use, not for what you avoid

 

You might have used Adblock Plus — the browser extension that blocks ads from your Web experience based on its list of ad servers. Very logically, ad publishers hate it, and last I checked, some sites wouldn’t let you in if you had Adblock Plus installed. After all, ads are what make the world go round, right? And then, there came the ad blocker-blocker.

Enter Flattr, which actually entered in 2010. It’s a project to “support the free and open web, (and) pay for free content.” So when you like (not in the Facebook sense) and article or song or video, you press the Flattr button and make a donation that goes to the publisher of the content, assuming the publisher has also signed up.

Yesterday, Adblock Plus and Flattr announced Flattr Plus, which goes several steps ahead. After you sign up for Flattr Plus, you’ll decide how much you want to give per month to the free Web on the whole. You then surf as usual, and — here’s the beautiful part — Flattr Plus will use an algorithm to decide how much each content publisher should get based on how much you “engage” with them.

All credit to Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay and also of Flattr. Courtesy Flattr — and now Flattr Plus (FP) — you can divert money away from ad publishers, and towards those who generate what you actually consume.

Linus Olsson, the other co-founder of Flattr, says: “The idea of great content has gotten lost in clickbait headlines and slideshow articles. All with the goal of generating advertising revenues. If we want to reverse that trend, we need a funding model that is based on engagement and attention rather than mere visits.”

FP is in beta, and the creators are still figuring out the exact algorithm. At issue is what “engagement” entails. Factors include how many pages on the site you visit, how much time you spend on each page, whether you re-visit or share a page, and so forth. Assuming they’ll work it out well, this tool promises to make the Web open and clutter-free.

Of course, FP gets a cut — a reasonable 10 percent.

But we’re also assuming a good number of users sign up, in the spirit of the Web as it was. That might be the deal-breaker: Just how many people want to pay for something they can get for free and clutter-free courtesy Adblock Plus?


TAGS: adblock plus, Flattr Plus, Peter Sunde

 
News Corner
IMP IMP IMP
##