Don't want to pay for content? Watch an ad...

Online publishers face the perennial dilemma- to charge or not to charge for their content. Decision either way is also dictated by questions on whether users would be willing to pay.

There have been a few models tried out with varying degrees of success. The model from Ultramercial is interesting. Publishers give users the option to either pay for their premium content or view ads before reaching the premium content.

It's great from a content user's perspective--- they have the opportunity to get 'premium content' without having to pay 'hard cash' (if we ignore the time=money consideration). And may be, if the ads are indeed targeted and interesting, the user may in fact find that ad content more useful than the buried premium content.

From a publisher's perspective, they are able to ensure that their content is getting monetized one way or the other; though I suspect they would prefer that users go for the "view ads" option rather than the content-subscription option.

How's it from an advertiser's perspective? Well, they get the impressions; but will they be able to make an impression on the user, who'd rather be keen to get on to the 'premium content'? That's the advertiser's dilemma....