The problem is if Google were to do that, the value of their ads would plummet since the kind of people who would pay to opt out of ads are the same people who would be most likely to pay for things in ads.

Not 100% sure but I think this is is the same reason TV companies don't want to offer their content for streaming online, and Hulu can't remove ads for its premium users.

I'd say it's exactly the reverse. The people who are most bothered by ads are the people to whom the ads provide the lowest value, and are thus the least likely to click them. For example, me.

I tend to agree with this. I rarely, if ever, click on ads because they seem interesting. I mostly see an ad and say "oh that is interesting, I was searching for cars before and now I'm being advertised cars on a music site, how completely useless".

The truth is I think Google's adsense business has never had any real true value to customers (except for perhaps their 'first page at the top' paid ads, I use them a lot, mostly because I figure companies willing to pay for ads usually are a likely 'proper solid business').

Most of the adsense these days is 'trick next buttons', where people put them at the bottom of a page that appears to be the 'next page' button, and it's not.

I spend absolute craptonnes of money of stuff I don't need. Internet advertisements I am exposed to contribute almost zero impact to my purchasing habits.

Except for Belroy wallets. I have no idea how they figured to target me ('hipster' programmer?), but I did end up buying a wallet from them when their ads followed me around for a while. And their products are nice :) But that is it!

I couldn't care less if they are giving backdoors to the NSA to all my email including all company crap that is confidential and all. If they put ads into my email I will look elsewhere unless there is a paid option.

>The truth is I think Google's adsense business has never had any real true value to customers.

I doubt that adsense has positive overall value to advertisers either. Weigh the amount you spend on the ads against the amount of profit you get from the revenue resulting from that advertising. Some people will be able to make it work but I really don't think it's a large percentage.

According to Wikipedia Google made $42 billion in adwords revenue in 2012. That's like $6 from each person on the planet.

Do adwords really have enough power to increase operating profit by that much?

When I was in high school, I worked for a farmer whose primary product was hay, as he was getting old for dairy. He was able to correlate the value of $1 investment in advertising (mostly weekly newspapers and ads at horse facilities) to sales. He used a pencil, penknife (for sharpening) and a bound marble notebook from the drugstore to do this.

At the end of the day, there may be businesses blowing useless dollars on advertising, but businesses that don't watch their dollars don't tend to last very long.

> Weigh the amount you spend on the ads against the amount of profit you get from the revenue resulting from that advertising.

I'm kind of assuming that every company doing advertising is continually making that calculation, and deciding that it does come out in their favour. Otherwise we wouldn't see nearly so much advertising.

I tend to assume the reason why we see so much advertising is because they _don't_ make that calculation.

That would be true for the old media. OTOH, online advertising is extremely data-oriented, especially in the US. Most business decisions are based on data. Businesses may be using wrong models or assumptions about the correlation or causation between advertising and revenue, but there is a very strong effort to analyze data for revenue growth.

disclaimer: i worked at Google

Actually, Google display network, that is the other side of Adsense brings immense value to advertisers. I don't know exact statistics, however I estimate that the number of advertisers using display network for the immdediate or nearly-immediate conversion is in double digits.

For most of them it is mathematically proven through conversion attribution and simple calculations that advertising on display network is profitable for their business.

As a fellow "hipster programmer", I was also enticed by the Bellroy wallet ads...

They showed up when I was in the market for a wallet and were exactly what I needed. Love mine, but seeing your post was kind of eerie.

Whether you pay to opt out of ads is a function of how much you hate ads and how willing you are to spend money in general. I think the latter factor is more significant.

Your premise is at least partially fallacious - whether or not I am willing to spend money anyway, is not the same as whether or not I am influenced by advertising.

If I spend money in the same way as I would have spent anyway, then the advertising has been a waste of time.

Why are people who hate ads more likely to be influenced by them?

People who can't tune out ads are most likely to be both influenced by, and aggravated by, them. People with "banner blindness" might not complain about your ad, but they're not worth a penny to the advertisers.

I think op means people with enough money to pay to turn ads off. People with money are the people advertisers want to target. Even if the person doesn't like ads the right one could still catch their eye.

If I find an advert song to be catchy or memorable I go out my way to avoid that product to such a severe extent that it really irritates me if something I use or like is advertised. It has me wondering how I'll ever manage without X.

By offering to pay you've identified as someone who pays for things making you more valuable to google, thereby increasing what you should pay to Google if you want to go ad free. Then google could offer a bidding war to advertisers to pay more than what your paying to get ads back. Then you have to pay more than that. Until an equilibrium is reached.

Maybe. I sometimes don't even notice there are ads there because I ignore them so completely. I think you'd have to study the matter further.

Presumably Google would consider that when calculating the OP's comment of "how much money they make from me".

Wow, never thought of it this way..

Just sign up for paid google apps. No ads there what so ever. It's $50 per year.

$50 per year per person.

As I run a Google Apps domain for my family, that would be several hundred dollars per year.

You said:

>I'd love for Google to work out how much money they make from me in a year, and then to offer to go ad-free for 50% more than that.

How do you know that the $50 per user per year isn't exactly calculated that way? I'm actually inclined to guess that the value Google gets out of you by showing ads might be significantly higher than the $33 your calculation would allow them to earn from you.

If I could pay for just me, I'd be tempted.

But with a domain it's all or nothing, and I'm not paying for my brothers, parents, etc.

Well, that is the rate.

Because it's aimed at business, not families. Fastmail have a family service that is much more flexible imho. The problem is trying to get family to actually pay for email.

But sadly, not a rate that individuals can opt in to, when on Apps for Domains. Shame really!

Google has $31 billion of advertising revenue on their own sites (says their 2012 annual report.) They have about 1 billion unique users per month (from Comscore.) So they have about $31 per user per year of ad revenue on their own sites.

My guess is that most of this is search. Although it may be possible to figure out how much revenue per user Gmail makes, my guess is that it is between $10 and $15 per year.

I think FastMail is significantly cheaper ($5/yr for a personal account, says their website at https://www.fastmail.fm).

If the internet has taught us anything (other than that there are many people with way too much free time) it's that a vast majority of people would rather not pay for stuff and as a result the number of people willing to pay will be so small that it's not really worth their while.

Outlook.com does have this option for $20 a year - would be interesting to know what the uptake is.

Google as an organisation is primarily setup for bucketing users into groups for ads. It's a core assumption thats part of everything they do. Therefor, it's not about how much money they make from you but rather that it's really hard for them organisationally to separate users who want to pay to opt out from the rest who are their product.

The cost there isn't what they make from you in ads, even if you're willing to pay double - it's the effort for them to switch their engineering to making money off two types of users - those pay not to be tracked and those who don't care.

Or even better, just sell their email software system so people can purchase it and install it on whichever server they want.

If they ever did, they would have to admit that the "free" service is actually just an sale where the user pays for the service with data and ad-watching. Doing that, it would both be bad PR, and would catch the rage of tax officers as only "free" services are tax-free when given to customers.

i have been waiting for this on youtube for years- i do not want to see the same video pre-roll i have already clicked skip on 30 or 40 times.

Being a technology company who are seen as leaders in personalised adverts you think they would over come this terrible user experience

Adblock Plus blocks those YouTube ads, it skips over them seamlessly, so you aren't aware they are there.

The "terrible user experience" which adds numbers to their impressions statistic each time you encounter it?

Based on the little I know about this I would guess the $ amount would be more than most would be comfortable with.

The risk is that it becomes too popular causing google's ad inventory to plummet.