I read a very interesting article today and one that is increasingly relevant.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/arti ... er-reporti
While I think there's more than selling papers behind the rampant sensationalism of Kotaku, which is obviously the example set in the article, it's true that bussiness models based on advertising are increasingly inefficient and specially so in the internet. I've done the calcs myself and getting a decent salary as an internet writer requires a ludicrous level of readership.
And, of course, having to rely on the good will of your readers for support is just dire. Writing is already a poor career choice, this only makes it worse. It's also impossible to start a subcription model without being already popular in the first place and competition from free sites makes everything more painful.
I do however understand that ads are very annoying. You may remember I asked for an adblocker because all those "shoot the iPhone" ads were driving me crazy. I don't watch anything on television because I can't stand two hours of ads for a feature film. The big losers here are users losers and creators of actual content who try to get paid for their quality instead of quantity. In a sense I fear media as a whole is moving closer to content farms which is a terrible thing.
Any thoughts on this?
EDIT: By the way why don't sites use static ads? Isn't there enough interest for them? They can't be blocked and it can't be that different from how newspapers work.