[eterevsky]

It is always possible to have several tiers of subscriptions, a cheap tier with some additional feature and ads, and a higher tier with no ads at all.

I am perfectly willing to pay extra to support a website or service that I'm using, but only if it removes all ads.

[ToucanLoucan]

The problem is: advertisers will argue that if you're offering a tier of service that removes ads, that's specifically going to be the most appealing to the group of your user-base that has the most money to spend and whom is most ready to spend it, evidenced by the fact that they have subscribed to your ad-free tier, and is therefore worth the most in terms of reaching with ads. Those people are self-selecting as the most responsive to being appealed to to buy things, which is what your advertisers want.

This is why the "subscribe to remove ads" thing never took off in a big way. Users love it, but advertisers hate it and it craters the value of the ad space you sell to whomever doesn't think it's worth it/can't afford it.

[wat10000]

YouTube and Spotify both do “subscribe to remove ads.” If they’re not big, who is?

[eterevsky]

This entirely depends on the subscription fee, doesn't it? The amount of ad revenue that the service is getting for you is limited, even accounting for the fact that as a paying user you might push the price of ads up a bit.

If you set the subscription fee above this value, you as a service will be better off regardless of the advertizers.

[benj111]

Surely in this reverse Catch-22 hypothetical anyone who is willing to pay to escape ads is therefore worth more, so they would need to be served fewer ads for the same income.

So the subscription should be free. And with less ads.

[greenie_beans]

yikes. that makes sense for an advertiser but also fuck that.

[justinclift]

> This is why the "subscribe to remove ads" thing never took off in a big way [...] advertisers hate it

My heart bleeds for the poor advertisers. /s

Actually, no it doesn't. Not even a little bit.