Google launches Contributor, a subscription service that removes ads from your favorite websites

Shawn Knight

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google contributor ads advertising google contributor web ads

Like it or not, the Internet today is largely funded by advertising. In exchange for free content, millions of websites run advertising campaigns to help pay the bills and keep their unique content flowing. One popular alternative is the paywall although I’d venture a guess that people loathe it even more than the ad-supported model.

Google is now experimenting with a new way to fund the web that eliminates ads on your favorite websites if you’re willing to cough up a small monthly donation. It’s called Contributor and specifically, it would let users choose to donate $1, $2 or $3 each month in exchange for getting rid of all Google-served ads on participating websites.

Contributors will either see a personal thank-you message or a pixel pattern where ads would normally be placed.

google contributor ads advertising google contributor web ads

Donations are handled through a user’s Google account and would partially go to the participating sites that a user visits (Google will keep a cut, naturally). Publishers will also receive payments through their Google advertising accounts.

Google Contributor is launching with 10 publishing partners initially and will be invite-only for the time being. Early partners include Mashable, Urban Dictionary, Imgur and the Onion among others.

It’s worth reiterating that donations will only remove Google-served ads; any other third-party advertising that a site has in place will still be shown.

google contributor ads advertising google contributor web ads

While not an entirely new concept among popular websites, Contributor is a surprising move on Google’s part when you consider much of the company’s revenue is derived from advertising. Reducing ad impressions seems like risky business which is perhaps why they’re starting out small.

I imagine some of you are asking why anyone would bother with Contributor when free ad-block programs can essentially pull off the same thing. The way I see it, it’s similar to why people pay for services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Spotify, Rhapsody, and so on. That content can also be found on the web free of charge and while I’m sure most prefer the convenience they afford, I’m sure there are at least some that pay to support the work of the actors and artists they love.

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This is really a nice idea. It's better than ad-blocker because when user uses ad-blocker, they're effectively cheating. They want to use the website, but don't want to support it. It's not fair.
I hope this Contributer platform or similar things will get widely adopted. It is the right way for people to continue to use "free" websites without ads.
 
Useless scam, if user want to support site, they can turn off adblock for site
 
I can't see how this could ever be popular. In the spotify case, users get something more than ad-free experience, they get access to more quality (kbps), features (offline), and more content directly (song level access).

Here, if websites offers some premium content only to subscribers this could work, like a all-sites-pass, like some newspapper require subscription to read all content, this could be much more powerful by allowing users to one economic fee subscription for all sites!

14 years ago, before adsense, I dreamed of this but also giving Internet providers the option to pay directly a little like $1 to contributor-service to offer premium-internet-pass to users, once a ISP offers for the same price all-access to popular premium content enabled sites, all ISPs should follow. This should work if a bunch of sites with exclusive content not found anywere else participate.

I do not say sites should block all content to non-subscribers but only a section or some premium articles or access, like exclusive reports, access to downloads, hi res versions of wall pappers or videos, hard-to-find things, more storage, premium support, premium profiles or premium visibility in dating sites or classifieds/sales listings, faster downloads on download services now asking for a fee, ad free blog/hosting, etc...
 
There's got to be catch! Methinks they most likely just move the ads to your Gmail inbox....:D (Then mark it as "spam", to insure themselves plausible deniability).
 
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A company that makes billions a year.. and hey want us to cough up money to pay for the ads they deliver and get paid for.. makes perfect sense.. in google land. slowly making my way back to firefox and duck duck.
 
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