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Comment by foxylad | Hacker News Reader

Horses for courses - for high volume sites this would be awesome. My immediate thought was "Great - at last Wikipedia can get rid of the annual begging bowl". It could also be a great solution to the news site paywall debate. I'd love to seamlessly reward the sites I visit often, and if Google can automate this, more power to their elbow.

Also, interesting that it is Google is doing this. It risks reducing their advertising revenue if it takes off too well - I wonder what their cut of revenue is like compared to their advertising business? This model pays them (and the content producer) per impression rather than per click.

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here is a comparable data point:

twitch.tv (video game live streaming website) pays it's broadcasters with advertisements and user subscriptions (50/50 default split on subs)

many broadcasters earn more from their subscriptions (dedicated fans) than advertisements.

with increasing use of ad-blocking software, this seems like the right time for this sort of thing.

In many countries, companies have a tax incentive to contribute to charities, up to 1% of their income. Billing this as a normal service to customers then transferring the money to charities after a tax-reduction scheme could be a way to fund the service cost-free. That said, it's extremely appreciable that companies help charities, whatever the scheme.

Wikipedia has no ads to make go away. Google Contributor is only for sites that use Google ads in the first place.

Google wants the power to tell sites that they have to use Google ads before they can get these Contributor donations. That's the whole point. So it will only hurt honorable sites like Wikipedia that forgo ads.

You can declare which ad networks you're willing to show ads from when you set up google ads. It should be entirely possible to include only Contributor.

With AdSense publishers keep 68% of the content ads. I have always assumed very large sites are able to negotiate a slightly better deal.

I can't locate any information on what cut they're taking from the Contributor product though.

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