Some days ago I was playing the excellent "Good Coffee, Great Coffee" on my phone (so wholesome; I sometimes just open it up to have the soundtrack playing in the background), and I eventually found myself in the "sponsors section," where the game allows you to watch "ads" in return for special in-game currency. I didn't care much about the currency itself; I was just watching the ads as a show of gratitude to the developers! (Between us, I was just opening the ad and then putting my phone down for the thirty or so seconds it took for it to play. Shh, don't tell anyone I broke the social contract).
Later that day I was catching up with some blog posts on Bix's page and saw that at the bottom he has a link asking people to pledge $1 a month to support him. I've seen many folks have something similar, and I think it's a great initiative. For most people, $1 per month is inconsequential, and it's a nice way to actually show your support.
I've thought about adding a $1-a-month link like Bix (the one who originally came up with the idea was Manu Moreale) but never could bring myself to do it. On one hand, it feels weird asking people for money. On the other, I'm afraid I will just bother them, as getting folks to "pay real money" is usually very hard. Not only the act of parting with your precious "acquisition potential" but all the hoops one needs to jump through just to show some support is usually just too much.
I think there's much to be said here about how we often tend to overvalue our money and so don't end up giving even just a little to those causes that we care about. We've all heard something like "if everyone in the world donated $1 a month we would be able to do so much to address poverty and world hunger". As a case in point, just think of Wikipedia. It's such a freaking useful platform. It's probably one of the cornerstones of our modern web and knowledge infrastructure. And yet, how many of us donate? According to Wikipedia, only 2% of readers donate at least once a year. And if you think about it, they do quite a bit of pestering about it on their site, so it's not a matter of visibility. (Donate, people! Even if only a single buck a year. It all adds up.)
Anyway, I digress...
Yesterday evening, as I was bathing the kids, an idea hit me: what if we had "reward ads" like those in "Good Coffee, Great Coffee" but on the web? At the bottom of every post there could be a link saying something like "tip me by watching an ad", which, when clicked, opens up a 30-secs-or-so video ad. It's not intrusive, and it's 100% at the reader's discretion if they want to click it or not. There's no obligation. If the reader likes your content and can spare 30 seconds, then they can click on the ad (and put their phone down until it's done playing).
Something like this:
Hey, like what I write? Please consider watching an ad to tip me!
Hopefully getting people to watch ads is easier than getting them to tip you $1 a month. Or maybe not.
...
If you think about it, it's a bit like Brave's value proposition, but instead of you ALWAYS being exposed to ads so you can make money and then support the creators you like, we flip it on its head and take the more respectful approach of having users look at ads that directly support the creator in question. Besides this, there's also the other excellent point that users don't require a specialized browser in order to participate (which is a huge win; a specialized browser greatly limits adoption).
I did some investigation about this, and as far as I can tell, there's no one using ads in this way. It also seems that there is a semi-mature environment for this sort of "reward ads" (as they're called) on the web, though it's entirely geared towards web games, not as a tipping mechanism.
Of course, any conceivable amount of money you might make this way is sure to be very (very) small unless you receive tons and tons of traffic (and the constituents of that traffic are prone to watching ads). At most, I think you could make only a couple of dollars a month. But that's okay; it's not really about making money, it's about giving more options for your readers to support you in ways that present less friction for them.
Now, I've been putting off talking about the relative "evilness" of such an approach. I'm not a fan of being the reason people are polluting their minds with ads. I also don't particularly appreciate the fact that, ultimately, my adding ads will benefit a huge-ass multinational corporation more than it does me. But I think these questions also depend a lot on what sort of provider you use. Perhaps if more people start using this approach, then it will open up the space for new and more "conscious" ad providers (if such a thing even exists)? I think it has potential to be much better than it is.
(Imagine something like Posteo, but for ads instead of emails)
Bottom line, this is just me exploring an idea. I'm not entirely sure if I would even add such a link to my site. I didn't even have a kudos/like button at the end of my posts (till today! My next post will be about this), so adding a "watch an ad" link seems a bit excessive. Still, I think it's a fun idea! Maybe someday I'll create a /tip page and add the option to watch an ad there?
...
I delayed getting this post published because I was trying to set up an actual proof of concept of what this would look like. I investigated a bit and ended up choosing to try with Google Ad Manager as my provider1. The setup was a bit... involved. Then I had to wait a couple of days for them to review my site and approve it for ads, and...
It seems my blog was deemed as "low value content", so I'm not allowed to use their Ad platform on my site until I improve the quality of my content 😂 oh the irony. (Maybe they know I always put my phone down whenever there's an ad?)
I could try with some other provider, but at this point I sort of gave up on this idea for now. If you manage to set it up on your site, I would love to hear how it goes!
Footnotes
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I found some other ones, but Google just seemed the most straightforward. If I actually wanted to do this "reward ad" thing long term, then I might choose something else, though. Google's minimum payout is $100, and at the speed I'm imagining this will work, it might take months or even years to accrue. ↩