Commissioned by the Digital Advertising Alliance, a recent Zogby Analytics poll of 1,004 adults aimed to find out the aggregate value that Americans perceive in services and content made available free to consumers because of advertising.
Respondents were asked to estimate how much people would have to pay for 17 different types of online services and content, ranging from e-mail to video and weather, if they were offered only on a subscription basis rather than for free with ads. Respondents reportedly assigned a combined value of $99.77 per month or $1,197.24 per year.
A large majority of those polled (85 percent) said they would prefer to have today’s ad-supported Internet where most content is free, rather than a paid Internet without advertising (15 percent). Most also responded that they would reduce their online and mobile activities a great deal (75 percent) or somewhat (11 percent) if they had to pay several hundred dollars a year or more for the ad-supported content that’s currently free.
Nine in ten respondents ranked free Internet content like news, weather, e-mail and blogs as either very important (73 percent) or somewhat important (17 percent). Eighty percent of respondents said they had found ads useful in finding new products, researching a purchase, or assisting with the shopping process, according to the poll.
The study also reports that the types of advertising that the consumers polled found most useful were movies/TV shows (43 percent), technology/devices (37 percent), clothing (36 percent), local restaurants (34 percent), groceries (33 percent), phone/Internet services (32 percent) and travel (30 percent).