I’ve been a pretty vocal critic of the ads and pop ups on this site. I downloaded and installed the new Edge browser today and turned on ad blocking, and it makes this a new website. It’s built on the same codebase as Google Chrome, but strips out the Google overhead and increases privacy controls. Check it out. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge
The Brave browser does the same thing. Designed by one of the Mozilla founders. It even keeps a running count of the ads and trackers it blocks. I'm at approximately 25,000 after only two weeks.
Im on the fence with this. I know this may not be popular and maybe Im wrong how all this works. I want GC to be profitable and be able to pay our writers like Spivey and Nick a good wage to keep them around. Any other site it would drive me crazy, but I give GC a pass on this.
Bless you! It works great. Last I checked, I also paid for this site, so let the freebies enjoy the ads to pay for the sites. Thank you!
One of the other posters mentioned AdBlock plus. It's free and since i installed it months ago I've had zero pop up adds. I use Chrome and am not a fan of edge.
I’ve been a vocal supporter of the ads, mainly because it’s what I sell for a living, so I understand the need for long tail publishers to monetize their site as much as they can. And, I clearly come to GC for the content and have been here well over a decade and a half, so I can get past the ads. However, the browsing experience at GC, especially on mobile, has always been poor. The fall of ad networks and consolidation of ad exchanges has made it hard for smaller pubs to create a clean experience and still drive revenue. It’s been a race to the bottom in pricing meaning pubs need to add higher impact units and more of them in order to make the same amount they were making 5 years ago. Ad blocking furthers this because it’s that many less impressions served. Then the exchanges don’t offer the same level of transparency that the ad networks did, So in many cases the sites don’t even know what the running. Unfortunately, without a dedicated sales team that can fill 100% of inventory (very few sites can do that even with a larger team), there is not a great answer short of cleaning up some ad placements and raising membership rates.
Geez SMU, had give me the bacon bro? Edge is terrible unless you only surf the internet. Functionally for businesses and power users its hot garbage. You're right about Chrome though, it has become a resource hog more and more as they "upgrade" it. I work in IT, the first thing I do is delete the icon so I never hear a user say "I was using Edge".... lol
Don't worry, there are only 4 ad's per click in the forums. Also they're going to take youtube content creators and hide them behind VIP paywalls. I get it. Media is bankrupt. It's disappointing that subscriptions aren't saving even this site.
If your experience is based on the original release, I would tend to agree with you. But given that Edge has been rebuilt from the ground up on Chromium and just released yesterday morning, it might be worth giving it a fair shot before trashing it. You got bacon because you trashed a post that was trying to be helpful without checking out the suggestion first.
Actually I was just throwing out a little joke and added a wink face. If you were one of the developers let us know and I'd give you a real sincere pat on the back. I mean, I am the only one to like your comment but it's all good. Edge is garbage for many more reasons other than speed. To each their own though.
Personally, I would be willing to pay (another) premium to GC for an ad-free experience. I have no idea how feasible it is to run the normal site simultaneous with an ad-free version for those willing to pay, but I would do it if it were reasonably priced and I'm sure others would as well. One of the best things about The Athletic, my only other internet subscription, is it is an ad-free experience. Just content. But they obviously have a broader market than GC so I understand the challenge.
The Athletic is $$$ well spent. I love it. You can check it out free for a week but fair warning it’s enough to reel you in.
The thing that is stupid is that if the ads are so intrusive that everyone has to install an ad blocker browser/ad on then they don't get that revenue from ads. Or worse some people who were subscribers maybe drop their subs and move on because they are annoyed by the experience. I use Chrome because I like having my browser and phone linked, but there is no ad blocker for the phone. So my solution is that I have to install another browser on my phone just for this site, after which GC gets no ad revenue from me? Makes no sense when they could just make the ad experience better.