Google Contributor was service from Google that used a pool of money set aside by the user to bid on ad slots, and if a particular ad auction was won, the ad would be replaced in the pageview with a pictorial pattern of the user's choice. The program was not well publicized, although tech journalists have covered it and I have written [1] about it in my comments when Brave and Flattr came up and have wondered why Facebook (sitting on a huge trove of real identities) never did the same.
But in 2017 it was shut down for a few months, and relaunched as a program which would omit all ads from the target site if the site was a partner, and the user has marked that site in their account. The amount charged for each pageview is set by the site [2]. Only a handful of websites are supported, although most are news sites -- local papers or TV channels.
This new Funding Choices program aims to greatly expand the list of sites that use Contributor by offering a managed solution that solves a better-than-before subset of two pain points at once: regulatory compliance and monetization.
But in 2017 it was shut down for a few months, and relaunched as a program which would omit all ads from the target site if the site was a partner, and the user has marked that site in their account. The amount charged for each pageview is set by the site [2]. Only a handful of websites are supported, although most are news sites -- local papers or TV channels.
This new Funding Choices program aims to greatly expand the list of sites that use Contributor by offering a managed solution that solves a better-than-before subset of two pain points at once: regulatory compliance and monetization.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20google%20contributor... [2] https://support.google.com/contributor/answer/7359560