> since nobody was actually willing to pay for the product
That's not necessarily true. In fact I don't think that holds at all. They've bought smartphones and laptops for hundreds and thousands of dollars and pay many tens of dollars every month to access the Internet. People are already paying quite a bit to access content on the Internet.
The problem with paying for most types of content is the content is not worth the amount of money it's practical to charge for it. Charging money on the Internet is expensive and has lower bounds below which no one will even conduct a transaction. That lower bound is about a dollar and so many transaction fees come out of it a seller is not going to end up with a whole dollar and the buyer will end up paying more than a dollar.
A blog post, gif, or YouTube video is not worth a dollar. For most people they're not even worth a whole penny. They're certainly not worth an up front payment sight unseen.
In the early days of the Internet charging for content was even less practical and more expensive than today.
Advertising on the Internet, like advertising in other media, is a way to "charge" users some fractional penny to access some content. In aggregate the content creator can make money based traffic. While AdTech has reached asinine levels of intrusiveness the concept of advertising isn't necessarily bad. It also doesn't exist just because users are cheapskates.
That's not necessarily true. In fact I don't think that holds at all. They've bought smartphones and laptops for hundreds and thousands of dollars and pay many tens of dollars every month to access the Internet. People are already paying quite a bit to access content on the Internet.
The problem with paying for most types of content is the content is not worth the amount of money it's practical to charge for it. Charging money on the Internet is expensive and has lower bounds below which no one will even conduct a transaction. That lower bound is about a dollar and so many transaction fees come out of it a seller is not going to end up with a whole dollar and the buyer will end up paying more than a dollar.
A blog post, gif, or YouTube video is not worth a dollar. For most people they're not even worth a whole penny. They're certainly not worth an up front payment sight unseen.
In the early days of the Internet charging for content was even less practical and more expensive than today.
Advertising on the Internet, like advertising in other media, is a way to "charge" users some fractional penny to access some content. In aggregate the content creator can make money based traffic. While AdTech has reached asinine levels of intrusiveness the concept of advertising isn't necessarily bad. It also doesn't exist just because users are cheapskates.