Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.ericgoldman.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 166 posts

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

#61

Post by addaon »

kdheiwns wrote: post #52
glaslong wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I greatly prefer podcasts where the hosts read the ads. If you're going to take ad money, you better be willing to sell it with your own voice. All else is a descent into scam ad hell.

Everybody does that and has for the past 10 years. People sell the scammiest stuff then completely dissociate and say "sorry guys I didn't know that was a scam haha. I won't do it again. This program brought to you by Honey. I use it and it's great." Their viewers always forgive them.

> Their viewers always forgive them.

Pretty strong selection bias there. And no way to know how many potential viewers avoided them after the first ad read.

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

#62

Post by bdangubic »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #60

> I never saw most of the offending ads because of my adblocker Using ad blockers is unethical. No one who uses one (probably 99% of people on HN) wants to hear this, but the conclusion is inescapable really. You may commence your downvoting. ETA: Why do I claim it's unethical? Every ad-supported page is an implicit contract: If you want the good stuff on this page, you need to pay for that by giving some of your att…

You may get downvoted because you are making a bold statement without any reasoning behind it - what exactly is unethical about it? ( https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unethical )

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

#63

Post by riazrizvi »

breput wrote: post #13

Several years ago, I ran a niche hobbyist website and incorporated Adsense (because why not?!?). The site featured a fuzzy search function since it referenced tens of thousands of named parts. The search result page would echo the (sanitized) search term followed by the matching results - along with recent search terms in the right sidebar. One day, some spambot hit the site and started searching for terms like "meso…

I think there is a super-sophisticated industry where advertisers are gamed out of their advertising dollars, and we occasionally can see it leaking out. For example I was very recently relentlessly hammered by political advertising by some odious tech guy who wants to get nominated for some congressional seat in the Bay Area. This was hard programming, where they just threw out the guy's name before you could hit mute, figuring that ppl would do that as quick as they could because the guy's vibe was so unrelatable. I have to imagine that the seasoned ad folks saw this dude as a pay day that they'd milk for all he is worth with this utterly misery inducing campaign. It's almost 100% brainwashing, with the tiniest sprinkle of substance. It has to be an industry that's preying on the buyer as much as the consumer.

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

#64

Post by esseph »

quantummagic wrote: post #54
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…

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...

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

#66

Post by ratrace »

sanswork wrote: post #50
shermantanktop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a footgun waiting to go off? Unless Adsense is pretty explicit about this, beyond some language buried in a TOS.

You have to agree to have read the policies when signing up and they've always been pretty clear about placement rules. Not placing ads on non-content pages is a pretty basic rule and would clearly apply to this since a search result is non-content. https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182?hl=en#zippy=...

[dead]

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

#67

Post by sanswork »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #55
breput wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. It seems like a ToS violation would have been worthy of a warning and revoking the offending earnings, but nope, it was no mercy or review.

or at least an explanation. That would of course require a customer service apparatus designed to service customers rather than one designed to force them to become tangled in the abyssal morass.

OP in this case isn't the customer, they are a supplier who has agreed to terms then decided to go against that agreement in a way that allowed scammers and himself attempt to defraud Googles actual customers.

OP isn't the good guy in this story. Them breaking a very basic, clearly worded rule assisted in fraud. Of course they deserve to be banned from the network if they can't even follow that rule.

Also all the other people in this story complaining about their rates falling off a cliff can blame people like OP who place ads in places they shouldn't leading to low quality traffic. No one wants to buy network ads if they have quality anymore.

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

#68

Post by tedeh »

quantummagic wrote: post #54
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…

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.

That's to be expected. Google needs that money to fund the AI development that will enable them to replace creators with their own slop, allowing them to pocket 100 % instead of sharing anything at all.

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

#70

Post by BLKNSLVR »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #60

> I never saw most of the offending ads because of my adblocker Using ad blockers is unethical. No one who uses one (probably 99% of people on HN) wants to hear this, but the conclusion is inescapable really. You may commence your downvoting. ETA: Why do I claim it's unethical? Every ad-supported page is an implicit contract: If you want the good stuff on this page, you need to pay for that by giving some of your att…

There are valid reasons for using ad blockers, hence why the general US Intelligence Community both uses and recommends the use of ad blockers "as a critical security measure to defend against "malvertising" and data collection threats".

All other arguments are moot in the shadow of this. However, if you're talking about how a media company can stay afloat without advertising, then you're getting very much closer to ethical arguments. I currently just point to the first paragraph in such an argument.

The advertising industry needs to sort out its inability to appropriately and safely scale before any ethical arguments are able to put roots down.

Post reply on HN