After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 3:49 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #11

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #5

I do find it interesting that the author specifies they use an ad blocker whilst also wanting to view the industry 'from the inside'. I'm not sure there isn't a level of hypocrisy there, albeit understandable. As staunchly anti-advertising, I wouldn't include advertising on anything I publish personally, but then I also don't publish anything, so I have no pressure to change my stance. I think I've convinced myself t…

It's an act of self-protection. I'm not anti-advertising. I'm anti-running-untrusted-software on my property. If they had stuck to adwords and static images with no invasive tracking I'd let their ads run. But the surveillance capitalists can't help themselves and want to run their 50MB spyware payload on my computer. I say no to that garbage.

Post by Terr_ » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 3:52 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #11

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #5

I do find it interesting that the author specifies they use an ad blocker whilst also wanting to view the industry 'from the inside'. I'm not sure there isn't a level of hypocrisy there, albeit understandable. As staunchly anti-advertising, I wouldn't include advertising on anything I publish personally, but then I also don't publish anything, so I have no pressure to change my stance. I think I've convinced myself t…

It's an act of self-protection. I'm not anti-advertising. I'm anti-running-untrusted-software on my property. If they had stuck to adwords and static images with no invasive tracking I'd let their ads run. But the surveillance capitalists can't help themselves and want to run their 50MB spyware payload on my computer. I say no to that garbage.

Post by bombcar » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 4:16 AM UTC

Suppafly wrote: post #80

donatj wrote: post #21

I have a tool on my website that gets about 250k unique views per day. During COVID I decided to put a single ad on the page to try to make up for my wife's lost income. It was for a time bringing in close to $500 a month, and was a nice little side income. My wife never returned to work, we had kids and she has stayed at home with them. As such the ad has stayed up. Last I checked though it is bringing in something…

adsense isn't the only ad network around, you could probably switch to another one and make a bit more.

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 4:25 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #93

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an act of self-protection. I'm not anti-advertising. I'm anti-running-untrusted-software on my property. If they had stuck to adwords and static images with no invasive tracking I'd let their ads run. But the surveillance capitalists can't help themselves and want to run their 50MB spyware payload on my computer. I say no to that garbage.

Correct. Google had initially a good program that was based on keywords and non-intrusive ads. They killed that in the pursuit of more profits.

Post by quantummagic » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 4:33 AM UTC

esseph wrote: post #64

quantummagic wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off-topic, but several small-to-medium Youtube channels I watch, mentioned that their yearly Youtube earnings are way down, by two-thirds in one case. It may be that Alphabet is dialing back their profit sharing - across the board.

This is because of Gemini/Claude/ChatGPT People are using AI as a search engine. https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-search-seo-traffic-study/ https://searchengineland.com/how-googles-ai-overviews-are-ac...