Most webmasters and online publishers hate ad-blocking – and rightfully so as it destroys one of the core monetization methods that keeps most of your favorite websites alive. That being said – users love ad-blockers, and there’s really only so much that can be done in regards to that. This means that websites will need a new form of monetization – but what will it be?
Let’s briefly take a look at what YouTube did with YouTube Red. YouTube launched a way for their users to view their favorite videos without any advertising, and simultaneously they rolled out a method for their YouTubers to get paid off their subscribers rather than advertising – either via paid content or via fan funding. So why can’t we use a similar concept for our favorite websites just as we do for our favorite YouTubers?
The Brave Ledger by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich; and Flattr Plus by Eyea – the makers of Adblock Plus; are two such systems that are currently being rolled out. The Brave Ledger focuses on letting both users and publishers get paid in Bitcoin for viewing and serving non-intrusive Brave Ad Network ads; however Flattr Plus is looking to let everyone donate to the Internet as a whole – and then spread it across to the websites users most engage with. Flattr Plus is available as an early access already – and hopes to generate $500 million for publishers over the course of the next year.
In a blog post, Eyeo communications manager Ben Williams explained the motivation behind Flattr Plus:
As we’ve written many times before, Acceptable Ads was a conscious pivot away from blocking all the things toward finding a way to block only the annoying things, so publishers can monetize on users’ terms. That was 2011. Since then we’ve been trying to figure out an ad-less way for users to fund content, because, well, we felt like it was the right thing to do.
Check out Flattr Plus for yourself here, and look out for the Brave Ledger coming soon as part of the Brave Browser.