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> This comes up regularly. All the enthusiasm for micropayments comes from people who want to collect micropayments. Not from the users who would pay them.

All the enthusiasm for ads only comes from the people who want to show/sell them. Not from the users who would be subjected to viewing them.

I think it's still a worthwhile discussion. Presumably the micropayments have fewer (or at least different) unintended consequences. And since in both cases (ads, micropayments) the side collecting the money is the one pushing them. So discounting micropayments solely on this basis isn't really a good way to discriminate.

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>All the enthusiasm for ads only comes from the people who want to show/sell them. Not from the users who would be subjected to viewing them.

Yes, it does seem that way because nobody actually says, "Please please give ads because I love them!"

Instead, the correct way to frame what users really want is to separate "stated preferences" from revealed preferences.[1]

The stated preference, of course, is for users to complain about ads and loathe them. Another source of stated preferences is marketing surveys and questionnaires.

But the revealed preference is different because it's the observation of what really people do instead of what they say they'll do. Most would rather watch youtube for free rather than pay $9.99 for YoutubeRed. Same for Spotify free tier with ads rather than $120 a year Spotify Premium. Most would rather read the 5 free articles with ads from New York Times rather than pay a subscription.

Another interesting example was Amazon's Kindle e-reader. They had a version with ads (what they call "with Special Offers") for $114 ... and one without ads for $139. More buyers chose the device with ads.[2]

Did Kindle users want ads?!? Of course not. But they valued the $25 savings more than the the ad-free experience. Basically, they "do want ads" -- in a roundabout way.

The micropayments enthusiasm doesn't really change the consumers' priority of "free with ads" over "pay for zero ads". People really really like the economics of "free". Unless micropayments is $0.00 -- which would be an oxymoron -- it will always have that economic handicap to widespread adoption.

>Presumably the micropayments have fewer (or at least different) unintended consequences.

One unintended consequence is that authors and creators end up with less revenue if they restrict their output to only subscribers making micropayments.

[1] https://www.beyondcostplus.com/blog/stated-vs-revealed-prefe...

[2] https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385398,00.asp

As for Spotify and Kindles, the service is not that different ad supported or not. That means any savings is a much better trade-off. Youtube used to be 100% free, and $9.99 doesn't get you too much more than what you get for free + ads. In fact you can install uBlock and never see adds on Youtube for free.

Most people don't actively want ads. Ads are just too big of a revenue stream for most for-profit companies to ignore. A benefit of the original TV cable subscription was not having ads (which drove initial adoption!), but then networks saw they could charge people for cable AND show them ads with little recourse for the customer, so they did.

Also the Spotify and Youtube examples you presented are strictly subscription vs. no subscription. There can be no consumer enthusiasm for an option on the web that doesn't exist! Micropayments would add a different option with different trade-offs.

These are older examples, but they still exist. When you buy a newspaper for example, your options are not only free vs. monthly/yearly subscription, as is currently the case in your examples. They can pay a small amount for a single issue. When you buy a phone card, you can pay a small(?) amount for single calls vs. having a dedicated phone line subscription.

More recently, when you have a Starbucks card, you can use it for small purchases instead of "subscribing" to Starbucks. It's easy to use and works with the apps and online ordering. It also avoids the massive fees that payment processors collect which usually make <$1 contributions next to worthless.

Currently the most similar system to a "micropayment support infrastructure" I can think of is Patreon, which some people do actually use to work on projects full time.

It's more complicated than that. I'm happy to pay for Pandora but not Spotify or YouTube; I pay for content on Amazon (despite hating Amazon) and not Netflix or YouTube red...

I can't rationalize those choices, even, it's just what I've done, empirically.

These things are very much aggregates and averages.

A significant number of people do subscribe to spotify, and some is buy the ad-free kindles.

some of us buy the ad-free...

sigh, phone keyboards and a lack of proof-reading.

close - 'and' .. new user-interface and/or genuinely popular marketing campaign and/or new social drivers can change the dry desert of no-pay to the flowing streams of pay .. ads without consent are somewhat a mimic of broadcast tv/radio .. the future is evolving

probably because I'm old bit I don't hate ads. Go read any computer magazine at archive.org from the 80s. It's 60-70% ads, 30-40% content. We used to actually buy those magazines partly for the ads.

It's not ads I hate. It's #1 tracking and #2 obtrusive ada. Videos, animations, pop ups, etc... Unobtrusive ads are fine. Stack Overflow, Google Search, JSFiddle come to mind as ads I like. They are often relevant and they are unobtrustive

While I agree micropayments should be persued more, personally I've seen many MANY users that love when things are free (as in money).