There are ads in the paper newspaper I subscribe to as well. Real reporting and quality writing don't come cheaply, and that hasn't changed just because the delivery method did. Probably neither the author nor I would be willing to pay for a subscription without ad subsidies.
It is also quite disrespectful considering the tracking etc. that comes with it. How many more subscribers would they get if they didn't treat them as garbage?
It seems unlikely that the foregone revenue would be more than about 10% of the regular subscription price.
This is based on other posts in this thread that talk about a $84/year subscription and $4-$15/year ad revenue. Since that was a reference to Facebook revenue, I imagine it would be a decent upper bound.
It reminds me of how people say that it's impossible to provide fresh produce without paying people below minimum wage. In lieu of common sense, it depends on numbers, which don't need to be precise, but you can't just handwave.
I'm inclined to believe the true story is simply, as others state, that no matter what the ad revenue is, it's X% more and nobody wants to give it up if they don't have to.
That’s unlikely to be true, some publications such as Ars Technica let you pay for an ad free tier.
What’s more likely is that the subscription price does in fact cover costs and that advertising revenue is seen as a nice benefit on top that can be grown creatively without any accountability or backlash.
Nobody has a problem with paper or paper-like ads, aka ads don’t stalk you, that the newspaper has actually vetted, and is happy to have its name associated with.
The problem is that web ads are nothing like that. They are orders of magnitude more scummy, can’t be vetted in advance and stalk the shit out of you in order to serve you “better” ads next time, whatever the hell “better” means in advertiser’s perverted minds.
"Probably neither the author nor I would be willing to pay for a subscription without ad subsidies."
There are a lot of counter examples to this. Hulu, Spotify, Ars Technica, YouTube Premium, etc... People are willing and able to pay for ad-free content.
Because there's a difference between reading professionally produced news and watching contributed videos? Is there a reason you think they are the same?
I think once it's shown that people are generally willing to pay for the services they use to be ad-free the onus goes back to you to prove why news is a special case to which that trend does not apply. Otherwise we get into an argument black hole where you could infinitely claim the things in question were different than the counter-examples given.
According to the New York Times latest earnings call, subscriptions account for 2/3 of their revenue. So ballpark roughly 50% more than the current subscription price would be necessary to maintain revenue at the same subscriber count sans other revenue streams.
Revenue = subscriber revenue + ad revenue from ads shown to subscribers + ad revenue from ads shown to non-subscribers
The suggestions was to eliminate the middle piece and increase the subscription price to make up for it in the first piece. That's still leaves the last piece.
This argument is getting really tired, it's true of literally every service online. Yes there are loopholes, no they don't matter. The barrier is just high enough that a great many people just pay up.
The above article also states that digital advertising revenue only accounted for 37 percent of total advertising revenue. So that means digital advertising revenue is at most 12% of total revenue. Furthermore, it is unstated how much of digital advertising revenue comes from paid subscribers vs unpaid visitors.
If we assumed, for the sake of argument, that half of digital advertising revenue was from paid and half unpaid, then cutting ads for paid subscribers would be doable with only about a 10% increase in price.
basically nothing. if you never click the ad you are making them a fraction of a cent each view. I doubt one person would even make the site a dollar after a lifetime of reading.
>Real reporting and quality writing
unfortunately I rarely see either of those in any news outlet. Most of it is regurgitated press releases and things that I don't care about.
