There is a discussion about the balance between the adverts and the content on news and content websites. A lot of people think that adverts are intrusive and shouldn’t be there at all. The adverts can irritate some readers.
But I think that content websites like this one should be advertising platforms with the content attached as a secondary matter which sounds bizarre but I think it is fair.
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Nearly all internet content is free to visitors who’ve got used to it. They expect to read well researched great information from people who are genuine experts in their field without paying for it as they never have.
That’s tens of thousands of hours work delivered up to all comers without charge. It is like a tradesman building a brilliant patio for a homeowner without charging a penny.
For the small website owners, the only way they keep going is because they have another source of income and they build their websites out of love and because they want to express their views and perhaps, in a small, way try and improve the world.
Most small website owners run at a loss despite those tens of thousands of hours of work.
For small website owners it is an altruistic act. A gift. For the big news websites this is a massive problem. They have a huge wage bill to service and other expenses.
They are beginning to charge for access to their websites. The alternative is the Mail Online, the Daily Mail’s online version of their newspaper which is almost an advertisement with news content attached to it as the adverts are so dominant.
The adverts are very intrusive and they have to be because the newspaper’s owner demands that readers click on the ads so they make enough money to service the heavy costs of running the website.
It is fair. It is okay to have a website is dripping with intrusive adverts. It should be expected by readers. How else can the website remain viable? Only be charging for access and that would be too big a barrier for many.
The trouble is that over the years the internet has existed internet users have become thoroughly habituated to getting information for free. They are not ready to pay for it.
But they should change their attitude and accept and use the adverts. Click on them. Use them. Allow the website to make some money from ads because it is the only way they can keep getting stuff for free.
There are a couple of caveats. Firstly, bearing in the mind the huge quarterly profits of Google with annual revenue of 279.8 billion U.S. dollars throughout 2022, they could give more away or pay publishers a more generous commission when visitors click on their ads. And ads for animal welfare should attract higher commissions compared to ads for banking, gambling or insurance. This would be a way of fighting for animal welfare which is needed. At the moment it is the opposite. Google is big business and it supports big business through advert commissions.
This is not a deliberate policy. It is simply about market forces. But market forces should be manipulated sometimes in the interests of supporting the more vulnerable. Animals are in that category.
Also, Google should be kinder in their advertising policies in respect of articles which have the purpose of reducing animal abuse by highlighting how prevalent it is. Publishers cannot include Google adverts on pages where difficult discussions about animal abuse are discussed. This is a form of indirect censorship as it supresses discussions on important topics.
But the bottom line is that Google adverts (Adsense) is good for the internet and has been good for a very long time. Many small website owners have used Adsense to help pay their expenses. Without their ads there would be fewer websites dispensing useful information to the billions of internet users.
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