If my local newspaper gave me any information worth the price, I would gladly pay for it.
> Ads are 100% a real part of the economy and are necessary to sustain certain kinds of business models.
I know a lot of companies believe this, since ads are ubiquitous. I just don't agree with them. IMO, if you are depending on ad revenue to fund your business, you either aren't providing anything worth paying for, or, as I said about Google and Facebook and some others, you're too lazy to try and actually make your users your customers, as they should be.
"if you are depending on ad revenue to fund your business, you either aren't providing anything worth paying for, "
This is quite plainly false.
It's a little flippant to suggest that all these industries that currently depend on ads are just 'stupid' and they're 'doing it wrong'.
There are hard dynamics at play here, and when one is confronted with them directly (usually by being in such a business), then one develops an intimate understanding of them.
There have been countless experiments with various things like micropayments etc. but the dynamic still tilts towards an actual user preference for 'free with ads and less privacy' as opposed to 'paid'.
> an actual user preference for 'free with ads and less privacy'
Users don't have a preference for less privacy; that's not the choice they're presented with. They're presented with no choice at all: just "free". The "less privacy" part is never explained to them up front or given to them as an explicit choice; it comes out later when the companies get caught.
Tell that to your local newspaper.
Ads are 100% a real part of the economy and are necessary to sustain certain kinds of business models.