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12/22/2024 06:42:45 pm

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Google Contributor Lets Users Pay to Not See Ads

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Google's biggest revenue source comes from advertizing, but for those who hate being the product, the search company is now offering a way to pay-per-month for your favorite publishers.

Google is a huge company, spanning search, video, office, mobile and even into futuristic areas like interactive glasses and cars. All of these markets may look different, but Google still continues to make the most revenue from advertising.

Ads have been core to Google's success since the start, allowing the service to be free, but implementing ads to make the user become the product. Google has created folders of information on the user, to make sure the most relevant ads are seen.

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This web of information has allowed Google to attract many of the best advertisers in the world. It has also made sure Google stays in profit over the past decade, while they continue to expand into new markets.

In the past five years, the rise of ad blocking services has made Google's job harder. In order to tackle the people who do not like ads or do not like being the product, Google Contributor now lets users pay $1, $2, or $3 per month to view their favorite publishers.

In place of the ad, Google will add a small thank-you note or a pixel background. It does seem a bit weird that Google would not simply remove the ad placement, but this will allow Google to still gain revenue from the pay-per-month to the publisher.

Google has not disclosed the amount they will take from the publisher for each dollar donated per-month. At launch, The Onion, Mashable, Imgur, Urban Dictionary and Science Daily all offer contributor options, allowing frequent users to pay instead of seeing ads.

This is not the first time Google has tried to swap ads with payment. YouTube is the most obvious example, where YouTube tried to create paid channels. The issue came when no big channels went with the paid model, and the smaller channels were not relevant enough.

Google will be rolling this out in beta and wants feedback from the community. It is unclear how many hardcore readers actually care about ads, or have the disposable income to spend a dollar on all of their favorite publications.

It does show Google wants to make options available for users. If users really do hate being the product for Google, then this should be the perfect way to remove them from Google's ad bucket; as long as Google manages to get more publications on board.

This also doesn't account for any non-Google ads, which a lot of publications run. Users may donate to their favorite publication, but only see half of the ads removed.

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