‘Contributor by Google’ invites begin arriving as Google makes changes to tier pricing

Google has today started sending out a new round of invites for the “Contributor by Google” program it announced in November of last year. The service, which removes AdSense ads from your daily browsing for the price of a $2-10 monthly subscription, also saw some notable changes from when it was first shown to the world. Google has now detailed new tiers which will be available to those who have been invited to try out the expanded program…

The premise is simple. You select a monthly contribution level—somewhere between $2 and $10—and you go about your browsing as you normally would. Depending on how much you contribute, you’ll see a certain percentage of fewer ads. Google says the $2 tier will get you 5-15% fewer ads, while the $5 and $10 tiers will remove upwards of 15-25% and 25-50%, respectively.

These are new prices, but I don’t think they should be seen as an unprecedented hike. The new tiers are likely to account for the fact that many more publishers have come on board (millions, according to Google) and more ads are now able to be removed via the program. The pricing was previously advertised as being between $1 and $3, but there weren’t nearly as many sites participating, and therefore that $3 contribution didn’t really make much difference.

It’s going to be a tough sell as a service made for the wider public, as ad blocking extensions for Chrome can get you near 100% ad blockage for the low price of free. But for those that have a heart for publications such as this one but would still like to ditch traditional and sometimes intrusive AdSense ads, this is a pretty good option. Google touts that the $10/month tier will show contributors up to 50% fewer ads than usual, which is definitely a pretty big reduction.

“Since last year, we’ve added coverage to millions of sites – everything from small blogs to large news sites – and we’re adding more everyday,” the invitation email says. This is definitely a bump from the select group of partnered websites that the service launched with. As more and more sites get on board with Contributor, it will be interesting to see how the tiers might change again to potentially remove even more ads.