Last month, Google announced that they will enable ad blocking software for Samsung smart phones. Google will soon only scrape one ad from linked sites. Same deal for Facebook. Meanwhile, surfers are turning to ad blockers in record numbers. Websites like TTAG — ad supported and smart phone dependent — are under the gun. To keep the cash and information flowing, we’re looking at a number of solutions. You may have already noticed . . .
our Blue Force Gear Quote of the Day and DeSantis Gun Hide Question of the Day. While these sponsored posts only deliver incremental revenue, it’s a start.
You may also noticed (how could you not?) TTAG’s auto-play ads. We’ve been informed that we can’t ditch them until we clean-up our code with the new site design (due in the next month or two). Sorry about that, chief.
At the same time, we’re finally working on creating reader emails. We’re negotiating with a software company that generates customized communications, which we can offer to advertisers for highly targeted (i.e., reader specific) campaigns.
We’re not considering some of the more aggressive ad-blocker blocking techniques used by other websites, such as curtailing content for readers who use them. Or paying ad blockers blood money to “white list” our ads.
We welcome any suggestions from our Armed Intelligentsia on how to maintain and expand our income while providing a non-intrusive user experience.
UPDATE: Having read some 100 comments, I can definitely say that the TTAG team is out of denial. As I mentioned below, we’re having an emergency meeting on our ads and code and other site issues tomorrow. We’ll report back. Thank you for your input. I promise you we will sort out these issues STAT.