Pay to surf

Pay to surf (PTS) is an online business model which gained popularity in the late 1990’s and experienced a significant decline following the dot-com crash.[1] PTS companies advertised their main advantage as sharing the advertising revenue with their user base in a form of rewards for watching promotional content over the web. In order to participate, users would need to install software that tracked their browsing activities and displayed targeted advertisements.[1] Ultimately, users receive financial compensation for their time spent browsing the web.[2]

Process

A PTS company provided their members with a program to be installed on personal computers which facilitated the display of advertiser banner ads while a member browsed the web. As the company's view bar software allows tracking of websites that the user visited, the PTS company was able to display targeted ads for their advertisers.[3] These advertisers paid the PTS company a small amount (typically US$0.50) for every hour a member surfed the internet.[2][4][1]

PTS Member payments were typically finite due to the limited amount of time per month (typically 20 hours) for which they could surf, and the fee that they paid each new member referred to the company (typically US$0.05–0.10 per recruit). A member was able to recruit as many new members as possible, and to make a profit encouraged some users to spam referrals. This action was officially forbidden per the User's Agreement and strictly regulated, especially among minors, who needed the consent of their parents or legal guardians to use this business model.

PTS companies

AllAdvantage is an example of a company which used a PTS business model.[5] It launched in March 1999 and grew to 13 million members after one year of launching using the multi-level marketing system of recruiting new members. The scheme largely capitalized on the notion that anyone could make money on the internet with little effort, under the slogan "Get Paid to Surf the Web".[6]

PTS companies attracted people who attempted to defraud the company out of money and members of the company were frequently forced to terminate their accounts due to spammers. Software utilities started appearing which allowed users to simulate surfing activity [7][8] and some users also created mechanical mouse-moving devices which ran around their desks (i.e. "JiggyMouse").[9] These programs and devices allowed users to get paid simply for leaving their computers on. This trend began an arms race between the PTS companies who built fraud-prevention software to avoid such exploitation of the model, and fraud program developers attempting to find flaws in this software, where each would release increasingly sophisticated versions of their software. However, by late 2001 with the dot-com bubble's collapse,[10] major PTS companies went out of business, as their sole revenue source was internet advertising.[11]

The few surviving PTS companies mostly operate on a rewards-based structure where users surf the web or do tasks such as answering marketing email and shopping at specific stores to obtain reward points that can be exchanged for gifts.[12][13] Startups such as Agloco rehashed the concept as "pay-you-for-your-attention" scheme wherein an Internet user is paid in exchange for the surfing interruption or paid in exchange for information about themselves and their Internet habits.[14] A web browser called Brave offered income-sharing feature with its users who opt to view its advertisements.[15] It was designed by JavaScript creator Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy.[16] Brave also proposed an alternate way of compensation for browsing, as users were given tokens, promised that they will eventually be exchangeable for dollars, operating in a similar manner to cryptocurrency.[1]

See also

References
  1. Finley, Klint. "This Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  2. "PAY TO SURF 2019". McEconomist (in European Spanish). 2019-03-10. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  3. Guernsey, Lisa (1999-07-01). "Can It Pay to Surf the Web?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-03-24.
  4. "Brave Browser Will Pay You to View Ads (But There's a Catch)". PCMAG. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  5. "It pays to surf". BBC. 1999-04-06. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  6. Guernsey, Lisa (1999-07-01). "Can It Pay to Surf the Web?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-03-27.
  7. Y. Peter Kang (2000-07-10). "It Pays to Cheat, Not Surf". Wired. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  8. Eunjung Cha, Ariana; Walker, Leslie (1999-12-12). "Pay-To-Surf Pyramid Schemes Abound - And Work, For Some". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  9. Lisa Guernsey (1999-06-01). "Can It Pay to Surf the Web?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  10. DARRAH, KIM (2020). "Paying people to surf the web cruises back into fashion". Retrieved 24 March 2022.
  11. "Yellowbubble finally bursts". Centaur Communications. 2011-10-19. Archived from the original on 2011-09-29. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  12. Carr, David (2003). "Media Talk; In Quest for Revenue, Web Magazine Dangles Pay-and-Surf Incentives". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
  13. Napier, H. Albert; Rivers, Ollie N.; Wagner, Stuart (2006). Creating a Winning E-Business. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. p. 48. ISBN 0619217421.
  14. Goodman, Andrew (2009). Winning Results with Google AdWords, Second Edition. New York: McGraw Hill Professional. p. 6. ISBN 9780071595742.
  15. "Brave launches its Brave Ads platform sharing 70% of the ad revenue with its users". Packt Hub. 2019-04-25. Retrieved 2019-05-06.
  16. Tiwari, Aditya (2019-01-17). "11 Best Web Browsers For Windows To Access Your Favorite Sites In 2019". Fossbytes. Retrieved 2019-05-06.
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