Do news consumers want to pay for an ad-free experience?

One of the reasons so many people have converted into paying subscribers for, say, The New York Times, is that they wanted to read NYT content but couldn’t without turning over their credit card information. Because Scroll doesn’t create or even host content, organic exposure will be limited. Of course, its publishing partners could leverage their ... See more

While its CEO wouldn’t give any actual subscription numbers, several publishing partners confirmed that they hadn’t yet seen any meaningful revenue from the service. Salon’s CRO stated that Scroll only generates “a handful of dollars every month.” One anonymous publisher said they’d only received a few hundred dollars total.

It’s worth noting that Scroll merely removes ads; it doesn’t grant you access to subscriber-only content. In the above scenario, you’ll still hit The Atlantic’s paywall once you consume all your free articles. Scroll’s entire value proposition seems to rest on guilt-free ad blocking.

Several individual publishers have experimented with removing ads as part of a larger subscription package. Talking Points Memo, for instance, offers an ad-free “Prime” membership for $100 a year. Some publishers like Slate promise “fewer ads” for paying subscribers. But for every publisher that offers an ad-free experience for subscribers, there a... See more