[dalu]

I run c64g.com

Back in the day I could choose ad formats and place them to be non-invasive. Since a while ago Adsense only has the responsive ad format. It stretches across the full width and is extremely high. I tried what they suggested to limit the size but it isn't working. The site looks nice without ads. And I personally hate so see it so full of ads. But server needs to be paid and I'd like to also earn something for my time and knowledge spent on developing the site and maintaining. There's a lot of work to be done there. I'd like the audience to be able to write their own reviews, upload images, maybe even offer a way to play those games in the browser. The site used to be #1 in search results, but since Google prefers wikis it's not anymore. I've also decided to not track my visitors via any trackers, so no piwik, no GA. Only server logs.

There's also legacy.c64g.com which despite not being listed anywhere anymore performs better than the main site in ad revenue. It has static banner ads that are not invasive.

I had a free forums service many years ago. German audience. Barely made server costs. I wanted of course to earn something for my time maintaining it so I put those annoying layer ads there. It was a downward spiral. The layer ads initially brought additional revenue, really nice revenue but people started protesting and after a while leaving and using adblockers, who could blame them. It was so full of ads it was unusable. I wrote an adblocker-blocker, which displayed a black screen if adblock was detected. That lead to people leaving even more. Eventually so many people left that removing the annoying ads resulted in not being able to pay the server rent and it had to close down.

Ads are a necessity for some sites (subscription based model won't work) Google is actively destroying the sites that choose to put those ads on them by removing choice of ad formats.

Recently I moved away from chrome on the phone for my daily browsing because Firefox allows me to install an adblocker add addon and chrome doesn't. Even worse are those cookie nag screens. Every top result on Google search has an annoying one. I blame the, sorry but it's true, idiots of the EU parliament who make half assed laws without taking care of the consequences. Remeber Shareware of the 90s? It's worse than that now. I wish there were cookie screen blockers. Lately I started to just navigate back when I visit a site with a modal cookie dialog that wants you to accept all by default. In most cases I don't bother to click anything anymore, if I visit your site and can't read the info I came for to read I will leave. Too bad there isn't a metric to count that.

GA is some of the worst spyware and since the US government has access to it whenever it desires it's also used to track individuals. It's one part of the huge spy apparatus the US shadow government built.