March 15, 2024
No more AdSense
Ads.... I get it. With TV, having to watch commercials was the cost of getting free content. Until streaming came and pretty much replaced cable TV and its double-whammy of commercials AND charging more and more for the service. When Netflix started streaming, you got a lot of content without commercials for a very modest monthly fee. Now, there are dozens of major streaming providers and they all want a steadily increasing monthly fee.
Print news and print magazines are pretty much dead. And they still haven't figured out how to charge for content. Hiding everything behind paywalls ticks people off. And let's not even get into those hideous "subscriptions" for every app and every site. Who thought trying to trick people into subscribing for every little app was a good idea? Who needs hundreds of unmanageable monthly payments that often are almost impossible to cancel? What a nightmare. But you can't expect content to be free, and so we've come to grudgingly accept that nothing is ever truly free.
Banner ads and such initially seemed an acceptable way to go. Unless they take over and become simply too obnoxious. Until there's more click-bait than actual content. And so on. It's a real disaster for all sides.
I thought about this long and hard when we launched RuggedPCReview.com almost two decades ago. Even back then, the handwriting was on the wall. Creating content costs time and money, and there had to be a reasonable, optimal way to make it all work out for all involved.
The solution we came up with back then was use a technology sponsorship model where companies that felt our content was worthwhile and needed, and with which they wanted to be associated with and seen with because it could generate business and impact purchasing decisions. Technology sponsors would get banner ads on our front page, and also on the pages that dealt with their products.
However, since it took time to build a sponsorship base that covered our costs, we also set up Google’s AdSense in some strategic locations. Google actually had called me personally to get on our sites. So we designated two small, tightly controlled ad zones in many of our page layouts where Google was allowed to advertise with advertising that we approved.
That initially worked well and for a while contributed a little (but never much) to our bottom line. But as the years went by, Google got greedier and the whole world began packing their websites with Google ads and ads and links and popups and what-all by Google competitors. That soon led to the click-bait deluge that’s been getting worse and worse and worse. And with it, online ads paid less and less and less until it was just a tiny fraction of what it once was, despite way more traffic on our sites.
Then began the practice of advertisers to post ads any size they felt like instead of staying within their designated zones, making web pages look ugly, bizarre, and almost unreadable. That, too, got worse and worse and worse, until it was totally unacceptable. Like it was when cable TV shows and movies were more commercials than content. Enough is enough. We simply didn't want to see our carefully crafted pages clobbered and mutilated by out-of-control Google ads.
So we finally pulled the plug on all remaining Google AdSense ads. A sad ending of an approach that began as an effort to advertise responsibly and to the benefit of both sides. As a result, we now have many hundreds of pages with blanks where the (initially well-behaved) Google ads used to be. We'll eventually find a use for that space. Maybe we'll use some to advertise for ourselves, to get new companies to sponsor our work.
As for Google.... please don't be evil, you once said you were not going to be. You initially did such good work with your terrific search engine. It really didn't have to end the way it is now. Too many ads everywhere, search results that are almost all ads and can not longer be trusted. And now Google has ChatGPT to contend with, the AI that does respond with just what you ask for. Of course, AI may soon also be turned into just another ad delivery system, and even worse one.
And so the quest for the best way of being compensated for the creation of quality content, one that works for the creators and the advertisers and the consumers, continues.
Posted by conradb212 at 7:33 PM