On my other blog - EngineBlog - I posted an idea about offering users a chance to pay to avoid seeing advertising. It’s an interesting discussing point, so I will post it here as well. I would love to hear your opinions.

Would You Pay to Skip Ads?

I have been running Gmail and Yahoo Mail side-by-side for the last month. I have found them both to be great email solutions, each offering great benefits. I’m curious to see who steals the more innovative features from the other first.

Both services advertise as part of the offering, but Yahoo lets you buy your way out of seeing ads. For $20 a year, you get several enhanced mail features plus a completely ad-free environment.

I started to wonder if users would be willing to buy themselves out of ad networks in other areas – mainly on search.

Both companies make an enormous amount of money serving pay-per-click ads as part of their search results. But would users be willing to pay to not see them?

A majority of users click on an organic link, not a paid one. But the paid links are clearly useful to many people, based on the growing profits of Google and Yahoo.

Maybe the question can be taking to a larger realm. Advertisements are finding their way into nearly every channel – including video games.

Would you be willing to pay to not see them?