Sick Of Ads? Crowdsource Your Favorite Websites Via Google

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
If you’re tired of being inundated by banners and pop-ups when you visit your favorite websites, then you’ll be happy to hear that Google is launching a new project which will allow Internet users to pay to make those ads disappear.
It’s called Contributor, and it allows members to pay between $1 and $3 per month to support participating websites. Doing so will not only support the creators of those websites, but will cause a special “thank you” message to appear where there normally would be an advertisement.
According to Chris Velazco of Engadget, the program is currently in its beta stage, but websites such as Imgur, The Onion, Mashable and Urban Dictionary have already become involved in the program. Velazco called it “heartening” to see that Google, which earned $15 billion in ad revenue last quarter, was letting content creators choose another option.
Participation in Google Contributor is currently on an invitation-only basis and is currently limited to US residents, said GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram. Payments are handled through a user’s Google account, and the contribution is not divided evenly to all websites enrolled in the program, he explained. Instead, it is only triggered when a user visits a specific website, thus ensuring that readers only support the publishers whose websites they frequently visit.
“For publishers, the contributions are handled through their existing Google advertising accounts, with the search giant taking a small cut of the proceeds,” Ingram added, calling them an alternative to Google AdSense. “The company said it chose partners who didn’t have too much traffic (with the exception of Mashable, which gets 40 million uniques a month) because it wanted to start small and see how much the feature would get used.”
PC Magazine’s Mark Hachman said, there is currently no indication the websites would deny access to visitors who do not participate in Contributor. He noted that recent statistics indicate higher-end ads cost just $2.90 per 1,000 impressions, and considering that even the most dedicated readers likely aren’t visiting the same website 1,000 times per month, it appears as though the new program could be more lucrative to content producers.
“I think the bigger narrative is publishers are the lifeblood of the Web, and to have a healthy Web, you need to have publishers that are able to thrive and fund their content,” a Google spokeswoman told VentureBeat’s Jordan Novet in an interview about the new service Thursday. “We’ve made it a priority since the beginning of our business to provide different ways for them to do just that.”
“Could Google Contributor become a realistic alternative to a paywall for large news sites or even individual content creators? That remains to be seen, but Google deserves some credit for continuing to experiment with different forms of monetization,” Ingram said. “Some may see it as yet another attempt by the web giant to lock them into its platform, but others will likely be willing to try just about anything to find a way of generating income from their content.”
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