Exactly this. Everyone needs to offer the option to pay in some way. If we could pay for a bundle of all sites even better.

Someone should make a paid adblocker service that shares revenue with site owners. Site owners can opt in to get a share of the revenue, so that each time a visitor using the adblocker visits their site, the site owner gets paid an amount equivalent to the potential ad revenue from that visit. That means they could serve up a custom ad-less page that's designed to look nice sans ads.

Users get a good adblocker that they don't have to feel bad about using, and site owners get to sustain the revenue they would've lost.

Maybe it could provide more benefits than just ad blocking? Perhaps it would just be a "premium membership to the internet". Site owners can take even more revenue if they implement even more features. More web app options, custom styling options, social badges, etc. The more a user pays a month, the more features he gets all over the internet.

The tech I'm developing makes this possible. The basic model is subscription sharing based on views, but it can be adjusted for time on-site etc. My intention is that the agreement with publishers is that they won't show ads to subscribers.

Yep I'd buy it.

If you're old enough to remember the start of cable TV, one of the promises was that it would have few/no commercials, because you're paying for it.

I'd trust very few web sites to stay ad-free if they switched to a pay model. The money is just too good for them.

The ethics of Ad-Blocking when you were promised / sold on something that was "Ad Free" only to end up with ads is a different question.

See Hulu, which says they still have ads in order to lower the subscription price.

http://www.hulu.com/support/article/20356372

I happen to be working on the technology to make this possible.

Exactly this? WTF? The "this" response was bad enough as it was. Now we are lowering the SNR even more by prepending "Exactly"?

s/Exactly this/I agree

Or eliminate it. He provided a small comment afterwards, and the replies to that comment are good. Not what I'd call noise.

Your comment and my response however...

I thought that "this" meant I agree. What additional information is conveyed by adding "Exactly"? Now when I encounter "This" I am going to be confused as to whether the author is agreeing in whole or in part with the parent comment.