Ask HN: What will happen when ads won't be profitable no more?

I think you can already see it with a lot of those networks. Ads aren't enough to support a lot of them, anyway, once they outgrow the free servers.

* Some write books, and self-advertise those to readers * Some sell equipment or crafts, etc. * Some link with IRL events

Though your conversion rates around these sorts of things tends to be lower than ad-clicks or views, the returned gains are much higher. However, bloggers tend to do these things as a network. (Split costs/profits, etc).

ad networks won't work, but 'internal' networks will thrive. FB exchange, Google Exchange even Twitter, they make a lot of money since they control the entire RTB stack.

If you mean niche blogs you can still get sponsorship and or promote affiliate products.

These are harder to block as it could just be an image or text link.

Native advertising and 'product placement' type ads like a mention in a podcast/blog post will probably become more popular and expensive.

The way I see it, blogs, websites and free apps will continue to thrive with:

- Affiliates (already popular)

- Selling collateral products, such as books, merchandise or premium memberships (already popular)

- Native advertisement (on the rise)

- Sponsorship (on the rise)

- Crowdfunding (on the rise)

- Micropayments (in it's early days)

Those monetization strategies can be used singularly or all together, which will also give a good revenue diversification.

The more natural substitute to traditional advertisement is obviously native advertisement and sponsorship. Those two alternatives require a more direct connection between publishers and advertisers/sponsors, leading to a completely different - less scalable, less optimized, but more effective and user friendly - approach to marketing and monetization.

So in conclusion, blogs/sites won't die with the decline of advertisement.