Yes, You are the Product …It Matters …and Can Be Remedied

“If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

This compelling idea has been around for a long time because it resonates with many -- but it has been criticized as an oversimplification.  A Slate article by Will Oremus, "Are You Really the Product?," provides an excellent critique.

Here, I explain why this idea really is important -- as background to my previous posts on reversing the ad-based business model, and to a forthcoming article.

A simplification, but a useful one

The concerns Oremus addresses have validity and are important, but as a basis for management and regulation of dominant platforms (most notably Facebook and Google), this is a very useful simplification. Regulations of necessity are simplifications, but done properly, they simplify in ways that are useful and have limited downside.

It is true that being a paying customer does not assure that a businesses will be motivated to attend to the value you receive. Many fail badly in that regard, but the customer's power of the purse is a strong motivator, nonetheless. How much worse would these businesses be if there was no revenue driver?

The drive to "customer-value-first" business

Further, while we see many examples of businesses that are customer-hostile, our connected world is making it harder and harder for that to continue. We are moving to what I call the Relationship Economy, one that values Customer Lifetime Value and is becoming increasingly "customer-value-first," driven by "loyalty loops." Value-based pricing is increasingly recognized as best-practice in B2B, and it is bound to become more dominant in B2C as well.

Ownership of attention and data as labor

As Oremus points out, this criticism of the ad-model goes back to the TV era (not just to 1972, but to 1959, when Walter Lippman said of "free" TV, it is ultimately "the creature, the servant and indeed the prostitute of merchandising"). But, because the Internet is so personalized, it has taken a new and more ominous dimension. Personalized media exert precision power over our attention and data. Mass media "mind-control" was superficial -- easily recognized and counteracted. Manipulation and surveillance by precision media is insidiously more dangerous.

The "reverse meter" addresses this directly -- putting a value on user attention and data enables the user to judge and accept or reject the value proposition. That gives businesses a much stronger incentive to optimize data and attention for user value, and to be transparent about how that is done.  We are no longer "powerless pawns," and gain real leverage -- whether enabled voluntarily by the platforms or by mandated by the government.

This will not solve everything. Other action is needed -- by users, and probably by regulators. As Oremus says, we "have the power to demand change." A forced shift to user revenue is not the only way to demand change. But it is the simplest and fastest way to drive a fundamental shift toward better directions. Other actions by users and regulators can then complement that. But there is reason to doubt they can be effective without it.

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More about FairPay

For a full introduction to FairPay see the Overview and the sidebar on How FairPay Works (just to the right, if reading this at FairPayZone.com). There is also a guide to More Details (including links to a video). 

(FairPay is an open architecture, in the public domain. My work on FairPay is pro-bono. I offer free consultation to those interested in applying FairPay, and welcome questions.)

Incentivize Social Media to Starve Disinformation, Not Promote It

Connect the dots:

• The reports of social media enabling disinformation, evading responsibility.*
• The problem of motivated reasoning.*

Social media will not manage disinformation effectively until they no longer profit from it. We are trying to stop the tide of disinformation, when all we can do is limit its spread and impact. Tides cannot be stopped, but they can be managed -- if the managers are motivated to do so.

Follow the money. It is well established that

• Social media are optimized for engagement, so they can sell ads.
• Disinformation enhances engagement.
• Therefore, social media profit from enabling disinformation to spread; they lose money by limiting harmful engagement.

The only systemic solution is to change their incentives: their salary (and stock value) must depend on revenue from users, not advertisers.

That may seem impractical, given where we are now, but there are powerful tools for changing that:

An Open Letter to Influencers Concerned About Facebook and Other Platforms. 

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(*Quoting Congressional report, as reported in NY Times, and Sinclair Lewis)

BuzzFeed, Google, Testing Recurring 'Pay What You Want' Membership -- Steps in the Right Direction

Digiday reports that BuzzFeed is working with Google to pilot a recurring "pay what you want" membership program. Here is a quick recap and outline of how FairPay points the way to future improvements.

The story so far

Digiday's Lucia Moses explains (emphasis added):

BuzzFeed News is adding messaging to pages that solicits small donations of $5-$100 as seen [to the right]. The initial benefits will be updates on big investigations and new video programming. (There’s no member-only content for now; if the program is successful, BuzzFeed News hopes to add perks that will come on top of its news content, that will remain free.)

BuzzFeed News, like The Guardian, has staunchly adhered to the idea of being part of the free and open web. But... it’s eager to capitalize on people’s growing willingness to pay for quality news.... 

BuzzFeed News said it’s working on its membership program as part of the Google News Initiative...Google helped BuzzFeed with tech and market research; it’s unclear if Google is planning to expand its subscription program to accommodate publishers that have reader donation or membership programs. A Google rep confirmed the company is working with Buzzfeed to help it explore different business approaches and understand how its readers would react to this kind of model. 

Moses refers to her previous report on "a textbook turnaround" with a similar program in the Guardian US (1/26/18) (emphasis added):

Guardian US was primarily ad-driven; philosophically, the Guardian has eschewed the more common paywall model because it believes its journalism should be as widely accessible as possible...

The challenge with one-off contributions is replenishing them. Most of the 300,000 US supporters (230,000) are one-off contributions; the rest are recurring subscribers. The reader support is mostly one-offs because the ability to make recurring contributions was just added a few months ago. The plan is to move people toward recurring contributions, which creates a more predictable revenue stream.

To that end, Guardian US has two people dedicated to reader revenue, which it plans to double to four in the next fiscal year starting in April. They’re identifying topics U.S. readers care about and are more inclined to support with their wallets, and they’re testing everything about the way it solicits contributions, from the color to placement to language of the message, which is typically British in its politeness, from a U.S. audience.

“We could be a little bit more assertive in the way we canvass,” [Guardian US CEO] Webster, a U.K. native , acknowledged.

 Some key points as I read this:

• Little or no news is locked behind a paywall.
• Payments are entirely voluntary. Emphasis is on being a patron or benefactor, not a quid pro quo.
• The contribution amount is not pre-set by the publisher, but varies from reader to reader based on what they think fair and affordable.
• Payments may in future bring perks, but still only a loose degree of quid pro quo (which encourages contributions under communal norms of fairness, altruism, and generosity, rather that exchange norms of bargaining).
• "Prices" are set by the customer, at whatever level they think fair.
• The publisher can nudge the customer to pay generously -- just how to do that nudging most effectively is something to be tested and refined.
• The recurring payment model not only adds predictable revenue, but builds a relationship that increases loyalty and fosters communal norms.
• These voluntary payments in a relationship context provide a rich field for learning, for each reader, what "readers care about and are more inclined to support with their wallets" and "testing everything about the way [the publisher] solicits contributions." 

FairPay points to sensible next steps

The FairPay strategy and architecture that I have been developing with colleagues shows how to extend this early success with more win-win models. 

The key is to leverage the relationship and the information it generates to understand: 

• the value each reader obtains (and perceives), and how that varies over time 
• how to maximize that value over time, 
• how to get the reader to recognize that value, and 
• how to nudge the reader to pay increasingly generously, at a level that fairly maps to that value.

The objective is to tailor the offers -- and the services offered -- to each user to best solicit a fair share of their wallet relative to the the value each reader enjoys -- and to nurture and grow that.

Further steps are to find perks and premiums that further demonstrate value, to remind readers of the specific levels of value they received (based on usage and other data), and to encourage more share of wallet -- to the level that offers the most value to both the business and each customer. 

• So far in the above, all payments are entirely voluntary -- but with some level of nudging. That could be the permanent strategy. 
• But, as a possible further step to increase revenue, some level of services could be offered with a clear expectation of fairness in the voluntary payments from the reader. After some cycles of nudging as to what value is offered and what pricing is considered fair for that reader, future offers of that kind may be withdrawn (for some period) if the publisher concludes the reader just will not be fair about their payments. This is still much more participatory than conventional pricing, in that the reader still decides (on each payment cycle) what is a fair price for them and the value they received. The publisher gets to enforce reader generosity for selected services -- at whatever customized level of gentleness or firmness seems best.

Details of these strategies are in the sources listed below. Especially relevant places to start are these posts:

• Patron-izing Journalism -- Beyond Paywalls, Meters, and Membership
• The Missing Piece of the Membership Puzzle -- Agreeing on Value for Each Member

Your mileage may vary!

In evaluating and testing such strategies, keep in mind that the results will be highly dependent on the "framing" -- specific design of the offers, the skill in communicating them effectively, and the selection of which services and which reader segments to apply them to.  Disappointing results may not accurately reflect the potential of such methods in general, but could just mean the test was not done in the best way possible (or that your business has far to go in getting your customers to feel you deserve their support).

There is a great deal of marketing communications, pricing theory, value proposition design, and behavioral economics to getting this right. The details may seem complex, but the basic principle is simple -- build a win-win relationship of dialog, trust, and transparency, jointly seeking to create and share value with the each customer, in ways suited to that customer.

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More about FairPay

For a full introduction to FairPay see the Overview and the sidebar on How FairPay Works (just to the right, if reading this at FairPayZone.com). There is also a guide to More Details (including links to a video). 

My article in the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, "A Novel Architecture to Monetize Digital Offerings" also provides an overview of FairPay (summarized more briefly in the ESADE Knowledge article "Three building blocks to monetize a digital business," and previously in Harvard Business Review, "When Selling Digital Content, Let the Customer Set the Price.").

Even better, read my highly praised book: FairPay: Adaptively Win-Win Customer Relationships.

(FairPay is an open architecture, in the public domain. My work on FairPay is pro-bono. I offer free consultation to those interested in applying FairPay, and welcome questions.)

Who Should Pay the Piper for Facebook? (& the rest)

It's the economics, stupid! -- that's the fundamental problem / fundamental fix

[Update 4/10/18: Zuckerberg hints that "certainly we consider" ideas in the direction suggested here.]

[Update 5/4/18: Bloomberg reports: Facebook Weighs Ad-Free Subscription Option] 

[A newer post, Privacy AND Innovation ...NOT Oligopoly -- A Market Solution to a Market Problem, focuses on regulatory issues, and other newer posts of relevance are in this list.]

The Facebook fiasco spotlights the perfect storm we now face, as the dream of digital media empowerment turns sour. Many have suggested a range of remedies. But at its heart this is a business model problem -- we may need a multi-pronged remedial effort, but without fixing the underlying business model, other measures will have limited effectiveness. We have not been imaginative about the business model -- but we can do much better. This post explains how.

Tim Berners-Lee (inventor and champion of the Web) put his finger on this issue: 

Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies, and the myth that it’s too late to change the way platforms operate. ...On both points, we need to be a little more creative. Create a new set of incentives and changes...will follow.

Facebook brought this to a head, but the ugly glare falls on Google, Twitter, and others. Many rightly blame this “original sin” of the Internet ad model that enabled wide access to “free” services. It is now all too clear why it matters that “if you are not paying, you are the product.” We created an “attention market” monster that seeks only to "engage" us -- an economy of clickbait and misuse of our own data. That threatens our privacy, our mental health, and the very democracy we thought digital media would enhance. Internet services have lost our trust. How can we get them to serve our needs? We must realign basic incentives.

It is true that many factors are at play: oligopolies fed by data moats and returns to scale; closed, opaque systems that confine us to anti-competitive “walled gardens;” amoral advertisers seeking profit from us; and even enemies of our democracy. We almost certainly need regulation on data ownership/privacy and concentrations of power -- but those will take time to shape, and they will always be crude and inflexible instruments.

What we can do now, to facilitate all of the rest, is to change the fundamental economics of social media by introducing new and better incentive structures -- from the operational roots, up. We need to align value creation and value capture to better serve users, and thus regain their trust. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the others can move on their own in that direction now (and can profit from that). Lacking that, we can actively encourage competitors to do better. Doing this will change the incentives that drive our attention economy -- faster and more surely than regulation. ...But we may need regulation too.

Many see this need for a new social contract, one that recognizes that if we are to have “our” media serve us -- as people and as citizens -- we must pay to make that sustainable. When we pay for our media, we become the customer they are driven to serve. We need to vote with dollars, not just “likes” -- to pay for what we value, and motivate our services to serve us. Incentive structures determine actions. Driving engagement to sell ads drives these services in the wrong direction. So, how can we re-engineer our incentive structures for digital media services?

What we have here is failure of imagination 

Zuckerberg admits to the problem, but sees no solution. The Times asked him “about Facebook’s business model -- selling advertisers and developers the ability to target Facebook users based on their personal data." He described his dilemma:

…having [Facebook] be free and have a business model that is ad-supported ends up being really important and aligned…Now, over time, might there be ways for people who can afford it to pay a different way? That’s certainly something we’ve thought about …But I don’t think the ad model is going to go away, because I think fundamentally, it’s important to have a service like this that everyone in the world can use, and the only way to do that is to have it be very cheap or free.

Zuckerberg fails to see that solutions are emerging to enable that “it be very cheap or free” for some, but sustained by user payments from others (those who can afford to pay a fair and sustaining price for the value they receive). That seems impractical only because we are stuck in our old logic. 

1. The old logic of scarcity, rather than the new logic of digital abundance. 
2. The old, but aberrant, logic of pre-set prices. 

In this digital age we can not only deliver services widely at very low cost, but we can mass-customize prices – not secretly, to exploit customers, but openly, in ways that customers buy-in to as fair.

• We are so used to the alienating 20th century model of mass-marketing based on pre-set prices (and driven by advertising) that we don’t see how consumers can work together with businesses to set customized prices that are fair for each of us. 
• What is fair depends on realized value (who, what, where, when, how, and why) and on ability to pay. But now we can apply the power of digital to restore and improve on the principles of value-based pricing that humans have relied on for millennia to take those value factors into account. Doing that is not only good citizenship, but good business. 

We need to re-invent our business models and pricing architectures to apply a new logic more suited to our new digital economy.

FairPay points to a better way

One architecture for moving toward such a new logic, called FairPay, has gained recognition for operationalizing a solution for businesses now (as outlined in the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, and a nicely illustrated summary of that, and previously in Harvard Business Review). The details will depend on context, and will need testing to evolve and refine over time, but the principles are clear and well supported.

Digital goods and services are not scarce -- but the willingness of consumers to sustain service providers is scarce. FairPay structures an “invisible handshake” to seek a fair allocation of that willingness to sustain over the course of the relationship. (It considers total value, both to the consumer and from the consumer, including use of personal data and attention to ads). To each provider according to their ability to create and deliver actual value. From each consumer according to their willingness and ability to pay to sustain that. (...With incentives that ensure both.)

The FairPay architecture centers on the continuing relationships we have with our digital services providers. The digital economy facilitates and thrives on ongoing relationships -- many are awakening to the deep changes of our shift to "The Subscription Economy." Those relationships can be managed to work as a “repeated game” (see details) that motivates mutual cooperation, fairness, dialog, trust, and transparency – to keep the game going. We create a process that repeatedly customizes fair prices for the value realized in each relationship -- for consumers who may be rich or poor, heavy or light users, and tolerant or intolerant of advertising and uses of personal data. (See this detailed use-case example.) By doing that, these services can generate good revenue from most customers -- and can make judicious levels of advertising acceptable to many of them.  

Many are calling for similar shifts in our economics: rethinking the value of our data as labor, membership models, and even proposals to turn Twitter into a cooperative. But FairPay shows how companies and consumers can embrace this new invisible handshake to move in desired directions now, fully embedded into routine operations, without waiting for new laws or new capital structures.

By harmonizing fundamental business incentives in this way, we will break the vicious cycle of exploitation and abuse, make services both affordable and sustainable, regain trust between businesses and their customers, and shape a new social contract. Working under that new social contract will reduce the need for externally imposed remedies -- and better position us to apply external remediation to our markets where needed.

Taking action now, at Facebook's initiative?

FairPay is a fundamental architecture for ongoing business-customer relationships that harmonizes the entire spectrum of current practices ranging from conventional pricing to radical extremes like pay what you want. It is applicable to profit enterprises and nonprofits alike (and it is in the public domain, for anyone to apply). Businesses like Facebook can better understand their current incentive models from this value-based perspective, and can test and gradually introduce more innovative models in ways that ensure they actually make their incentives more win-win. That can both increase profits and also empower consumers, by creating more cooperative, transparent, and trusting relationships.

Ideally, such a transition could be entirely self-initiated by Facebook (and the other platforms).

• Facebook could first test FairPay at the margins, for specific "premium" services like reducing ad loads and giving users more control over filtering criteria and data privacy. [**See update below suggesting Facebook is considering this.] 
• This could include "reverse metering" to recognize and give credit for the value that users provide to Facebook, paying with their attention and their data. The same FairPay process can let users individually determine what level of advertising and data usage they will tolerate, in return for reduced payments. 
• Even with a significant level of advertising revenue continuing, sharing that revenue with the customer would shift platform incentives toward satisfying users and providing ads that the customer considers relevant (effectively making the advertiser the consumer's customer). 
• That reverse meter could also credit user-generated content and viral sharing. 

Simple trials at the margins could begin to shift some percentage of Facebook revenue to be user-funded, rather than ad-funded. Once trialed with privacy-sensitive and social-welfare-minded users, it could be proven, refined, and extended to others to shift the revenue base more broadly. As the percentage of user revenue increases, Facebook would be inherently motivated to be more user-value-first in its decision processes.

Facebook reported that in the US and Canada it generates about $7/month in advertising revenue per user. (Of course that is now under serious threat, as based on advertising abuses and monopoly rents. Is it fair that Facebook gain such high margins? Perhaps it should be only a fraction of that, say $1-2/month.) 

Whatever the fair level of revenue per user with its current model, expecting revenue of comparable magnitude from a shift to user-paid revenue does not seem outlandish, at least for a significant portion of users who want and can afford a premium, ad-free (or ad-reduced) and privacy-strict service. For them, a rate of even $10 per month may not be unreasonable (perhaps even more for some users with full-feature, high usage and high ability to pay). Gradually, the broad range of users could be phased in, including large numbers at rates that are "very cheap or free."

But still, there is the question of what is a fair profit margin for Facebook's service -- are current levels unfairly high monopoly rents and spoils of abuse? That brings us to consideration of more forceful change...

A heavier hand? -- mandated gradual improvement (the vehicle emissions regulation model)

To the extent that Facebook and the others fail to shift their incentive structures deeply and quickly enough, external measures can be applied by competitors, and by government. 

• Many have proposed competitive efforts, new "alt-Facebook"services that offer more customer-first business models and practices. FairPay can help make those strategies successful. But the path to scale at the level of Facebook seems slow and difficult. Given the severity and urgency of the crisis we are now facing, mandated action by Facebook may be required. 
• Here too, changing the fundamental incentives -- and monitoring and tuning them to ensure that they work as desired -- is the best way to achieve results. 
• Change can be mandated in much the same way that we mandate increasingly strict vehicle emission standards. Shifting at once to a reader revenue model would be challenging, and something Facebook management and shareowners might be very reluctant to pursue. But regulation could be staged to require that X% of revenue must be user-derived by some date -- with X starting small, but then increasing in stages over time. As X increases, incentives for tolerating ad-related abuse would be reduced and offset by pressure to be customer-first. Let Facebook figure out how best to do that, but give them targets over time, and hold them to it.

If we force digital services businesses to find more win-win customer-sustained business models, they will find ways to to do that far better that we can yet imagine -- whether with forms of FairPay, or some variation on similar themes. That will make them and their users (and all citizens) much happier. But if we as consumers and citizens and regulators don't have the imagination to push them to use their imagination, they will not try very hard.

The nuclear option? - regulation as a public utility

Of course, given the gravity of the threat to public welfare and the urgency of change in corporate mind-set -- and the fact that Facebook currently provides what some might view as "essential" communication services along our social graph that we would not want to do without -- providing utility services -- there is an obvious extreme option.  Nationalize Facebook, or at least regulate it as a public utility, funded by its users, with government subsidies as needed (much as was done with the Bell System). This might be done as a temporary custodianship that would revert to private control when appropriate. Such a structure would immediately incentivize Facebook to put public welfare first. That may seem drastic, but is that so unreasonable for an essential public service that can do great harm if misused?

• The Bell System was a regulated monopoly until 1982, when it was broken up into independent "Baby Bells" connecting to users, long distance services, and equipment suppliers. 
• Telephone service regulation followed the earlier and still continuing example of railroads being regulated as "common carriers."
• Postal services have always been public services, paid in part by users, but subsidized by governments as needed. 
• Public radio and TV are government-funded with voluntary payments by users. 

Hasn't Facebook become a common carrier? How can it be reasonable for Zuckerberg to have the unchecked, unmonitored, exclusive control of this new "Pa Mark" that that serves all of us as a utility (much as "Ma Bell" did)? Clearly, there is an antitrust case here, and the breakup of Ma Bell is instructive, as I explore more deeply on my other blog.

Toward a win-win future

Any of these options (alone or in combination) would begin to change the fundamental incentive structures of our essential digital services -- more or less dramatically. We can apply the heavy hand of regulation* -- but to the extent we can shift internal corporate operational incentives to align with consumer welfare -- we are likely to achieve better outcomes more organically, in ways that are more continuously adaptable to changing needs and ongoing technical advances. To the extent business see that and act to get ahead of this, they can solve the problem better that regulators, at least in large part.

• Whatever we do, we need to move quickly and decisively. Facebook still can take the initiative, and perhaps retain a high degree of autonomy. Alternatively, we may conclude we need stronger and swifter measures. In any case, it is essential that we put the consumer (and the public) first, by putting incentives in place to drive that.
• The surest way to do that is by having the consumer pay -- so that Facebook is driven at every level to satisfy them, and not the advertisers and hucksters who seek to buy consumer attention cheaply. 
• We need to have the imagination to rethink our obsolete economic assumptions, to get creative about mass-customizing our value propositions, and to seek a path up this ladder of value.

FairPay is one architecture that points in that direction. If you don't like that one, find another. In any case, we need to move aggressively on whatever path we can manage to find, as long as it leads toward full, fair, and transparent alignment of value creation and value capture. 

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[*Update 4/9/18: An excellent summary of how intractable regulatory solutions are is in today's column in The Information by Sam Lessin. I commented on it: changing the business model economics would reduce the severity of the abuses that regulation can only crudely seek to remedy.] 

[**Update 4/10/18: Zuckerberg suggested in his Senate testimony that Facebook would “certainly consider ideas like that.” As reported: "By not rejecting the possibility of a paid product, Mr. Zuckerberg’s comment could be interpreted as endorsing the idea that Facebook might experiment with a version of its social network that relies on subscription revenue instead of advertising."

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More on this theme

Newer posts: 

• Reverse the Biz Model! -- Undo the Faustian Bargain for Ads and Data 
• Privacy AND Innovation ...NOT Oligopoly -- A Market Solution to a Market Problem.

Older related points: 

• Cool Hand Zuck -- What We Have Here is Failure to Innovate / Looking Toward a Better, Fairer Future
• Zuckerberg: How to Fix Facebook -- Stop Hanging Us With the Ad Model! -- A New Economics, 
• Beyond the Ad Model - A New Economics for Media.

Another prior post, How Market Commerce Can Become More Cooperative, Fair, and Human, addresses Twitter (when there was some excitement about the idea of turning it into a cooperative). The same principles can apply to any digital service to consumers.

Other posts in this FairPayZone.com blog explain the key principles that enable this:

• FairPay Changes the "Game" of Commerce -- the basic structure of the repeated game
• The Ghost of Pricing Future -- A Thought Experiment -- pricing for value and ability to pay
• An Invisible Handshake for The Digital Wealth of Nations -- a more cooperative twist on the invisible hand
• Making Customers Want to Pay You -- Research on How FairPay Changes the Game -- the behavioral economics .behind this

Broad suggestions on opening up the platform oligopolies are in a post on my other blog:  "Architecting Our Platforms to Better Serve Us -- Augmenting and Modularizing the Algorithm"

Other selected items on my other blog are also very relevant.

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More about FairPay

My article in the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, "A Novel Architecture to Monetize Digital Offerings" provides an overview of FairPay (summarized more briefly in the ESADE Knowledge article "Three building blocks to monetize a digital business," and previously in Harvard Business Review, "When Selling Digital Content, Let the Customer Set the Price.").

For a full introduction to FairPay see the Overview and the sidebar on How FairPay Works (just to the right, if reading this at FairPayZone.com). There is also a guide to More Details (including links to a video). 

Even better, read my highly praised new book: FairPay: Adaptively Win-Win Customer Relationships.

(FairPay is an open architecture, in the public domain.)  

(My work on FairPay is pro-bono. I offer free consultation to those interested in applying FairPay, and welcome questions.)

Reinventing Subscription Platforms With FairPay -- for Apple, Google, and others...

In the emerging battle of subscription platforms between the Apple iTunes App Store, Google One Pass, and others, the radically new FairPay pricing process offers a better way to play the game, one that benefits the platform provider, the seller, and the buyer in new ways.

As widely reported, Apple has the dominant position, and is using that power to pressure sellers, and claims to be making things good for buyers.  Google is seeking to be more seller-friendly, and to allow more freedom, which might ultimately be better for buyers as well. The larger issues relating to this battle promise to help shape how digital content is sold, and how a major portion of our economy evolves.

• Subscriptions are a critical battleground for competing platforms and business models, one that could set the ground-rules for monetizing digital content and services at the broadest level.  
• Subscriptions get at the heart of ongoing customer relationships, and provide an aggregation structure that works for a broad swath of content and services.
• Subscriptions relate closely to the major pricing alternatives of free and freemium.

FairPay is particularly relevant to subscription businesses, especially those based on cross-vendor subscription platforms (such as those offered by Apple and Google and others).

FairPay is based on some very simple principles, with the idea that what is needed in a revenue model, is not to choose the right price, but to create an adaptive pricing process.

1. Let the buyer set any price he considers fair after the sale (Pay What You Think Fair, post-sale).
2. Let the seller (or a collective of sellers) track that price and use that information to determine whether to make further offers to that buyer in the future.

Instead of a fixed price, this process generates a cooperative and adaptive series of pricing actions, each based on feedback on how fairly the buyer sets his prices. Using this buyer reputation enables sellers to go beyond freemium to offer adaptive hybrids of free and paid service.  FairPay can be used as a complement and enhancement to conventional fixed-price subscription pay walls: Those who pay fairly, rise above the pay wall -- those who do not, must face it. (A diagram of core steps in this process is in a previous post.)

In the context of a subscription, this process unfolds on a (more or less) month-to-month basis:

• As an alternative to the fixed pay wall, a new user can be offered a trial month of unlimited use of a basic class of service, on the basis that at the end of the month they will set a price for what they used, on a Pay What You Think Fair basis.
• The buyer will be told up-front that renewals for additional months will depend on whether the price they set is deemed fair by the seller.
• As the process continues after initial use, buyers will be asked to set their price, and could be given usage reports to remind them of what they used, and how that compares in quantity and value to typical subscribers. 
• The seller can frame the offers and the pricing requests with background on standard set prices, suggested prices, and typical FairPay prices actually set by other buyers, all with respect to the types and volumes of usage by the consumer (such as basic and premium tiers).
• Buyers can be encouraged to give reasons  for why the chose to price as they did, including low or high usage, low or high quality, low or high value realized, economic circumstances (student, unemployed, retired, business use), etc. (all or mostly multiple choice, for automated scoring).
• As long as the buyer sets prices that seem reasonable considering all these factors, the seller offers FairPay renewals, and the buyer enjoys the freedom of the FairPay Zone.  
• For those that fail to pay acceptably, it is back to the pay wall (at least for a time, possibly to be given another chance in the future).
• As this continues, each buyer establishes a FairPay Reputation that characterizes how well and fairly they pay, and whether they do so consistently or erratically.
• Based on this FairPay Reputation, the seller can upgrade or downgrade their subscription offers to include more or less premium tiers of content or service, and added perks.
• At the same time the buyer learns both the value of the service, and the expectations for fair pricing.
• As buyers establish good FairPay Reputations, the seller can extend more FairPay "credit" to include longer periods between pricing, and more value that can be enjoyed before it must be priced.

FairPay takes conventional approaches to subscription pricing and stands them on their head.

• The buyer, not the seller, sets prices (for himself, as a market segment of one). 
• The seller gates the offers to specific buyers, and thus manages the value at risk, at any given time, to each buyer.
• Pay What You Think Fair largely eliminates risks of buyer remorse.
• Price it Backward (after usage) further reduces risks of buyer remorse.
• Buyer price-setting accommodates a wide range of price sensitivities to ensure that anyone who gets reasonable value from a product/service can afford to buy it.
• Sellers need not cut off potential buyers (who may not appreciate the potential value), only buyers who have proven to not value the product (as realized) at an acceptable level. 
• The impossible task of setting a price that is "right" for all is replaced by the manageable task of understanding specific buyers and their sensitivities through a structured dialog.

Given its roots in Pay What You Want, it may take some thinking to appreciate how FairPay can not only result in acceptable prices, but actual profit maximization, and do this with needed simplicity.  Some deeper insight into this is provided in my previous post, Cutting the Gordian Knot of Price Setting: FairPay, Pay Walls, Hurdles, and Simplicity.

FairPay has even more power in the context of a cross-vendor subscription platform:

• FairPay Reputations for individual buyers can be tracked and applied across sellers.
• Sellers can maintain control of offer terms and gating, but manage this better based on a shared FairPay Reputation database.
• Sellers encountering a new buyer (to them) can see if the buyer has already developed a good or bad FairPay Reputation in relationships with other sellers, and frame their offers accordingly.
• Buyers know that their FairPay Reputation is a valuable asset, that enables them to get more and better offers, and that compromising that Reputation can have real consequences, by limiting future offers from other sellers
• The FairPay Reputation database becomes a valuable asset to the platform provider, attracting sellers, and creating a significant barrier to competitors. This can work much like a credit rating database.
• Consumer privacy can be protected by opt-in provisions, and by limiting what data individual sellers can see from other sellers (including the option of none at all other than a simple rating or go/no-go indicator).  

Of course, FairPay can be implemented by a single seller, for use just with their own subscriptions (as long as the platform does not prohibit that, as Apple seems to, but Google does not).  But the power of a common platform and a shared FairPay Reputation database greatly expand on that.

At both the marketplace platform and seller levels, FairPay creates a whole new way to achieve and manage a nearly optimal exchange of value.  FairPay thrives on:

• Ongoing buyer-seller relationships, as opposed to isolated one-purchase stands.
• Aggregation of items in subscription or other bulk purchase contexts.
• Rich dialog on product/service value (as it is realized by the buyer, and with respect to the costs incurred by the seller).
• Building a knowledge base on buyer FairPay Reputations (with full consideration to buyer needs, values, and circumstances).

FairPay processes and platform services can begin with relatively simple structures and criteria, to accommodate initial usage.  As platforms, sellers, and buyers gain experience and familiarity with how the process works, they can evolve toward increasing layers of nuance and sophistication in:

• How offers are managed and framed to users. 
• How prices are set, explained, and tracked.
• How FairPay Reputations are determined.
• Doing all of this with full consideration of all relevant factors and circumstances.

Additional background on the general concepts of FairPay, its grounding in behavioral economics, and its application in various business contexts is provided at the FairPay Web site, and in the many other postings on this blog.

FairPay for the App Store -- A Radical Pricing Process for Higher Revenue

FairPay, a radically new spin on Pay What You Want pricing (PWYW), could transform pricing for apps. It offers a way to let developers break through the "penny gap" to get a fair price, while giving buyers a high degree of freedom to set their own price.

Apps are becoming a huge business, but the vast majority of them are free. (A recent analysis suggests 81% of iPhone app downloads by volume are free, even though other reports indicate that only about 28% are free by title. This effect has been described as the "penny-gap" -- products go like hotcakes when the price is zero, but demand drops hugely when the price increases to just 1 cent. This makes price setting a major dilemma for app developers. (One attempt to solve this software pricing dilemma was "shareware," in which buyers could Pay-If-You-Want, at a suggested price, but that has proven only marginally successful.)

FairPay can provide a way to bridge this penny gap, using a radically new variation on Pay What You Want, one that still limits buyer risk, but strongly encourages fair prices to sellers. As described elsewhere on this blog, and on the Web, this new variation, FairPay (short for Fair Pay What You Want), uses Internet feedback on what buyers pay, in order to develop a reputation for fairness. The seller (or multiple sellers) then use this FairPay reputation feedback to decide whether to extend further offers to a user based on how fairly he pays. Thus FairPay does not just rely on innate buyer fairness, but looks over their shoulder to help give that sense of fairness real teeth.

(This process also applies to other digital content, as explained elsewhere. The case of e-Books is especially similar to this example of apps. That should be fairly apparent, but I expect to do a blog post more specific to e-books in the near future.)

This process works best with an ongoing buyer-seller relationship, so in the context of an app store, FairPay would be best implemented by the store operator (Apple or Google, or whoever). That way the FairPay reputation feedback is collected across all purchases by that buyer. This enables a dynamically adaptive cycle of offers, prices, feedback, and further offers that rewards those who pay fairly, and cuts off those who do not. I suggest that app store operators should try this (and I would be happy to assist in such an effort).

Such a FairPay pricing process for an app store can be quite simple.

• The store offers to let buyers try a small number of FairPay-eligible apps on a FairPay basis, with the understanding that the buyer can try the apps for a time, see if they like them, and then set whatever price they consider fair (post-sale PWYW).
• The full FairPay process would be explained in detail up front, so buyers understand that future offers will depend on what reputation they develop for paying fairly. Their alternative will be to pay pre-set prices for future app purchases. A suggested price for each app might be provided for guidance.
• The buyer tries the apps, then sets prices, and can indicate why they paid what they did. For example a buyer might explain that they were disappointed in a product, if that is why they decided to pay little or nothing for it. (Of course they can also say the love it, and elect to pay especially well.)
• The store then assesses the prices paid, and the reasons, and decides whether to offer that buyer more items on the same FairPay basis. Criteria might include consideration of app-specific suggested prices set by the developer, and the prices set by other FairPay buyers.
• Obviously those who pay well will get a continuing stream of further FairPay offers (as long as they continue to pay reasonably well). Those who pay well for some, and explain why not for others, might also get a few further offers (effectively on a probationary basis), until it is determined by the store that they either do or do not pay fairly in general.
• Those judged by the store to generally not pay at an acceptable level can be cut off from further FairPay offers, and restricted to conventional, set-price prepaid sales (at least for some time, possibly extending a second chance to try FairPay sometime in the future).
• The cycle continues, based on these evolving FairPay reputations. The longer this process runs, the more meaningful the FairPay fairness reputations of the buyers, and the better able the store and developers are to manage revenue and risk, by controlling what offers are made to which buyers.

Presumably the store would implement and manage this process as a platform service, enabling developers to opt in to offer their apps on FairPay terms, typically in combination with the alternative of conventional pre-set prices. Developers might set suggested target prices and other evaluation parameters, and could change those parameters or opt-out, depending on results.

The result is that FairPay can be a win-win solution for both the developers/stores and for the consumers:

• Buyers will feel more respected and empowered by the added trust and flexibility.
• Some will pay less than the standard going rate, but some will pay more.
• Many who might not make a conventional paid purchase (because of the penny gap) might be willing to pay something reasonable for a FairPay purchase, once they can see that they have gotten a useful app -- the penny gap is smoothed over, and the developer and store get more revenue.
• Developers need not feel they must make their apps free in order to attract buyers (since FairPay gives a try-before-you-set-the-price option).
• The store can (with inputs from the developers) individually and dynamically tune the details of the offers and the process to encourage good payment levels, and to send free-riders back into the hard "pay wall" of the conventional pre-set price.

FairPay for The Times?...for JournalismOnline newspapers?...or Google Newspass?

Newspapers feel they must charge for Web content or go under. My radical new FairPay pricing process could provide an important tool for doing that.

Major players are moving from free to freemium combinations of limited free access (to some small number of articles per month), with a "pay wall" requiring paid subscriptions for more access. The New York Times has committed to this (as nicely described by David Carr), and News Corp recently bought into Journalism Online, which is building a similar platform for other newspapers. Most recently, reports are that Google will jump into this game as well, with a similar platform called Newspass.

Clearly this could be a wrenching change, and reflecting that, talk has shifted in nuance from the rigidity of a "pay wall" to the idea of "dialing" pricing policy into a "metering" system that can be adjusted to market conditions.

FairPay puts the objective of flexibility on steroids, by shifting toward a Pay What You Want model that give readers more control, while still giving publishers the last word (over time). How can that be? FairPay develops a buyer reputation for payment, based on direct feedback on pricing, to a dynamically adaptive hybrid of free and paid content. My article on FairPay explains this radical "Fair Pay What You Want" pricing process in some depth.

Here are some comments relating to this class of newspaper models and how FairPay could be used as a complement to their metered offering (as suggested in this diagram).

How it works:

1. Selectively offer to let the reader set any price he considers fair after each month of subscription (Pay What You Want, post-sale).

2. Let the publisher track that price and use that information to determine whether to make further offers of that kind (FairPay renewals) to that buyer in the future.

Those who pay fairly, rise above the pay wall -- those who do not, must face it.

First, an experimental program might be offered to a selection of readers based on FairPay pricing. This might be aimed at regular users on the following terms:

• Unlimited access is offered on a month-by-month basis upon subscription.
• Before the start of the next month, the user decides on a FairPay price to pay for the current month (with a usage report provided to the user for reference).
• Depending on the FairPay price set by the user, the publisher decides whether the subscription offer will or will not be extended for the next month.
• By coexisting with the paid subscription model, users will have a reference price, and the usage report might indicate how their usage compares to averages (and to the standard number of free articles).

Once tested, this FairPay subscription plan might be enhanced and offered more broadly, with more varied levels of service:

• Price setting might gradually be reduced to a quarterly or yearly cycle for established subscribers with good FairPay reputations, easing the hassle of price setting, and extending "FairPay credit."
• Usage reports would be provided to assist in the pricing reviews.
• Payments might be monthly (even if price setting is yearly), for better cash flow and flexibility.
• The options offered to any user on each renewal/pricing cycle could be adjusted based on their payment history (with consideration of any relevant circumstances known or reported). Those who pay better than average might get added rewards, and those who pay less might get less.

Thus those who pay fairly get increasing levels of trust and other rewards, and float above the pay wall, but those who do not get kicked back down into the pay wall.

This benefits both the publisher, and readers:

• Users feel more respected and empowered by the added trust and flexibility.
• Some will pay less than the standard subscription rate, but some will pay more.
• Relating pricing to usage might help get heavy viewers to pay more, compensating for those who pay (and/or use) less.
• Many who might refuse the conventional subscription service might be willing to pay something reasonable for a FairPay service -- added revenue to the publisher.
• The details of the offers and the process can be individually and dynamically tuned to encourage good payment levels, and to send free-riders back into the hard pay wall of the standard plan.

Bottom line:

• an even more nuanced and individually set dial that give readers some say in pricing, but leaves ultimate control with the publisher.
• more happy users, plus more revenue to the newspaper to support quality journalism.

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A rough sample of how a FairPay offer might be presented to subscribers is on the FairPay Web site, along with an FAQ and other details.