If they want to monetize, publishers should control their own generic ad inventory (like they used to in old pre internet days) and ask for opt-in if you want customization.
Easy on paper but hard in reality.
This site provides news and information of USA TODAY NETWORK. We hope you enjoy the site."
Colour me impressed. I sincerely hope it catches on.
The idea that "user tracking" is now happening on the internet and not in print isn't true. Yes, internet tracking can follow you specifically, but that's because the systems have gotten faster and more connected.
Back then it took the form of the subscriber database as you suggest, and was used to help target and sell ads in the paper. The print industry often "sold" the subscriber list in detail to prospective advertisers to demonstrate the potential reach.
Losing detailed subscriber data was one of the primary objections many papers expressed to Apple's app store distribution model which can effectively render readers anonymous, as this was apparently one of the most valuable things they had.
This means the revenue they can charge for that ad is 100x less, which means that any sites without massive, massive user bases will perish, and those that survive will do it on a pittance.
I think Patreon has the only good answer so far. There are multiple people on there that make top quality content and earn good money from it.
It's probably not an answer for every industry.
I mean: GDPR didn't forbid money. Not even advertising. Only using personal informations without explicit consent... Please, don't be too ridiculous and stop watching FoxNews :-D
Behavioural targeting is fine!*
Contextual targeting is fine!
*In many circumstances.
In the 90s, the N.Y. Times was $1 in my city and the local paper was $0.30. That covered paper, distribution and ink.
The ads paid for it, and I think the ads were more effective. IMO online ads are mostly fraud and bullshit.
The irony is that we'll get there, eventually: Apple and Google are slowly agreeing a payment system and then they will push it into the browser, and everyone will use it.
If we just do big-dollar monthly or daily subscription paywalls, we end up with a Balkanized web where I can't read the article you're reading unless I pay for it. That'll significantly change the way interactions happen on the worldwide web.
Sure, maybe that's exactly what would happen, but changing one variable in a toy model is not proof that it will.
There are successful news sites that do just fine without becoming relentless clickbait optimization mills - and in fact, those are exactly the sites I tend to read. Two examples, so we're talking about something specific: talkingpointsmemo.com and techdirt.com are both daily reads for me.
TPM is, for want of a better term, the more advertiser-friendly of the two, but it intentionally works fine with ad blockers. Techdirt is probably well-known to most folks here.
The other commonality is that both of them work hard to not be enslaved by the adtech surveillance machine - they both have non-ad revenue streams.
And I think that is the real trick missed by overly simple reasoning - even when it is correct (and it is, frequently), it obscures more than it helps. And somewhat more nebulously, I think it trains people into a way of thinking that blinds them to options. After all, if you "know" you can't reduce your surveillance metrics below industry-average intrusiveness, you won't look at possibilities involving doing so. Instead, you'd look at additional non-ad revenue as "more and better" and do both - thereby losing me as a potential customer.
Is that a good tradeoff? I don't know - and that's the point. These are much more complicated questions than econ 101 will guide you through.
It's also a dilemma of sorts. If you stop running ads, then there is one less outlet for them, which means rates for all the other outlets are likely to grow. If enough people do it, the few players left will make very good business. Would you rather move out, risking your livelihood on experimental business models, or stay in with the devil you know, ensuring nobody is going to do better than you?
What you mean is running 3rd party ads via ad networks.
It's perfectly feasible to show an image that links to some advertiser's site for a negotiated fee. This is the equivalent of a paper magazine with advertisements. Not renting out injection points to executing whatever foreign code on their visitor's devices.
My ad blocker won't even block it (well not by default, and only as long as you play nice, it's not like online advertising has any goodwill left over, or ever acted to deserve it).
Still it's hard to deny that the (presumably temporary) EU site is a much nicer experience. It's certainly faster.
They have plenty of metrics on the ads still, just not on the users. It's not going to be an issue to see how often an ad is shown, they just don't know if it's relevant to the reader. The good thing is that no they have a way of measuring the effectiveness of targetted ads, because the entire EU is available as a control group.
For a newspaper, like USA Today, I honestly doubt that targetted ads convert much better than random ones. EDIT: Random or based on the content of the article.
Just because it's been useful doesn't give it some unqualified right to exist.
Either pay or sell yourself.
A gamble they might lose if people just stop sharing and click Washpo articles, but a possible route if others follow suit.
Meanwhile, NPR goes more hardcore than even USA Today: https://text.npr.org
I wonder, does that mean EU users are just a nuisance costing traffic, or that all graphics are tracking visitors?
To wit (washpo):
"You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads"
Where is the "No I don't. Just give me regular/random ads" button?
and,
"Premium EU subscription" "No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking"
There's nothing specifically EU about that, in fact, it sounds like a good service to offer to all your readers. But still, there's a big difference between on-site advertising and third-party ad tracking, and that difference is at the heart of the GDPR. A half decent journalist could have figured that out. Maybe that's their real problem.
But most importantly, and frighteningly, instead of these two stunts being knee-jerk backlash reactions, maybe they're serious and most data-peddlers aren't shady figures in smoke-filled backrooms, but simply the fourth estate en large.
Also, I wonder how much of Washington Post and NPR's revenue comes from Europeans. It might not even make sense for them to spend resources to be more precise in their compliance.
What is your preferred third option for content that costs money to make?