[bt3]

Can you explain the thought process behind Google Ads on the site?

Despite my various ad blockers (Pihole, etc), I would generally view ads on a blog as setting a tone akin to microtransactions on a video game, rather than trying to build a brand or simply document thoughts/ be viewed as a thought leader.

[misterbrian]

Sure, I wrote one of my recent articles on this topic: https://briancaffey.github.io/2021/10/31/how-and-why-i-added.... I mostly treated Adsense as a learning experience.

I realize that most people who visit my site will use an ad blocker, so they won't see ads.

At one point I built an ad-block blocker (like you see on news websites), but doing that is sort of a cat-and-mouse exercise. It worked with some ad-blockers, but not others, so I disabled it. It also seemed to really bother people! I got lots of nasty chat messages through my Drift integration.

It is also an incentive for me to write articles that get a big audience.