[Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

[Thomas Dalton]

On 7 November 2010 16:40, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> They won't be people that want ads, though. They'll be people that
>>> want ad revenue for us. If they click, they'll be clicking to get us
>>> revenue and not actually buying, which advertisers stopped falling for
>>> years ago.
>>
>> 1) Why the huge assumption of bad faith?  I don't think you're correct
>> that people would sign up for ads who don't want ads.
>
> Let me amend that.  I don't think that the percentage of people who
> want ads would be lower in an opt-in scenario.  Obviously *some*
> people who don't want ads would sign up for ads.  But presumably
> *most* people who do want ads would also sign up for ads.  So the
> proportion of people who want ads would go up, in my estimation quite
> dramatically.

Yes, you are obviously right about that. It would be a high proportion
of a very small number, though. People don't click on ads because they
go looking for them, they click on ads because they get distracted
from what they are doing by the ad and it occurs to them that it might
be worth clicking on it. That's why adverts are made to be attention
grabbing.

>> Why have ads on Wikipedia pages when
>> you can just google for things you want to buy?
>
> It can save a step.  Also, maybe Wikipedia's ads could be better
> screened than Google's ads.

Going to Wikipedia seems to be adding a step, not removing one. We
can't do any significant screening of ads. We can remove obvious scams
and really annoying ads, but anything more than that wouldn't be
neutral.

>> If payment *were* by
>> click, then people would abuse it, which is why payment wouldn't be by
>> click and we wouldn't get much money. That was the point I was trying
>> to make.
>
> Right, but your "we wouldn't get much money" "point" was just
> speculation, and I was speculating differently.
>
>> Can you give an example of a site with opt-in advertising that
>> actually gets significant revenue from it (for the number of page
>> views they get)?
>
> I can't think of any site that has opt-in advertising, so no.

And why do you think that is? Sure, I'm speculating, but the fact that
neither of us knows of any site that is actually doing it suggests my
speculation is accurate.