Micropayments: Effective Replacement For Ads?

[Ray Dillinger]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Tim May wrote:

>At 2:57 PM -0800 2/26/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>>
>>If they can fix micropayments so that I can authorize my web
>>agent to spend up to $5 a month and not pester me about it,
>>they might have something I'd use.
>
>Most people will skip any sites that cost money...unless, maybe, it's 
>a porn site that they specifically want.
>
>There are very, very few pay sites which are surviving, let alone thriving.

Right.  All the "content-for-pay" artists now have to compete 
against all the unpaid amateurs who are webpublishing because 
webpublishing is easy and nearly free.  

Unless they can provide content that is absolutely above and 
beyond what the amateurs can do technologically and artistically, 
they are going to discover that there is no paying market for 
their stuff.  

>>My web agent ought to keep me informed about which of my online
>>habits are expensive and in what degree - but that's maybe a
>>trailing-two-weeks summary about how the budgeted money is
>>being spent, not an "okay to spend half a penny?" dialog every
>>ten seconds on the site.
>
>And there will likely be scams whereby tens of millions of Web 
>surfers find out "two trailing weeks later" that they paid some money 
>for something they didn't want, as when they were redirected to some 
>page and charged automatically before they even knew they were there.


Right.  And that's when they learn something they did was expensive 
and not to do that again.  As long as the web agent can keep it under 
the budgeted amount, a few mistakes (and even a few scams) can be 
tolerated.  The race would be between people trying to build smarter 
web agents (popping up and saying, "Hey boss, this link's always been 
free before, but now it costs a buck -- are you sure you want to go 
there?") and finding more subtle ways to try and rip them off. 

Beyond a certain level of subtlety, ripping people off is known as 
"marketing," and considered a non-problem. 

>Even with limits on payments--to stop the $135.87 "fee" for landing 
>on www.sexyfun.com by accident or by redirection--there will be 
>angles for grifters and cons to exploit anytime an automated "don't 
>bother me with petty charges" system is used.

Absolutely.  There are angles for grifters and cons to exploit in 
every market where money changes hands. 

				Bear