Hey there all,
A few items worth noting as the discussion here gets lively.
• The author's opinion is not the official stance of Tom's Guide or Purch.
The piece is absolutely opinion editorial, and raises a few good points - but it isn't an assertion of how we feel at the company level or even the team level. As a company, our stance as I've come to understand it is that we're okay with our readers using ad-blocking software. We're prefer you didn't, but we're not in a position to dictate to you. We work to keep our content as high value as we can, and to keep our ads unobtrusive (and follow-up aggressively on removing them when they aren't). It'd be nice of you to whitelist us, but even if you don't, we'll be fine. A lot of times I ask for community events and things to be made into ads for insertion here and there on the site, and a lot of people don't end up seeing them because of blocking. It makes me sad, but ultimately, you have to do what you have to do as a user.
Our official stance on the matter is that a) we acknowledge that users use ad blocking, b) we cast no judgment for or against on the use of it, and, c) if you do use it, whitelist us if you like our content enough to desire a similar amount of it / more of it in the future. It's a pretty straightforward approach, and one most would agree with is a sensible one.
• The author is not a corporate shill.
I had a belly-laugh about that one. Avram is one of the smartest people in our company, and has never said anything even remotely shill-like. He has ranted to me a few times about struggles on the backend with the CMS, and is often the first one to bring things to the attention of the people above on the totem pole, but he's the furthest thing from shill I can think of. The ad people at Purch don't get to post on the forums, but they do get the erstwhile angry/angsty/agitated emails from me when a bad ad sneaks into the mix. Functionally, I or the other members of the community team would probably qualify as the definition of a "shill" presenting an unbiased opinion in place of something objective, except that we serve two masters as Community staff - the user community at large AND Purch. Positing sell-out assertions for the sake of serving one of those would inevitably betray the other. Avram, as a member of the Editorial team, operates behind a hundred-foot wall between Editorial and Ad Sales meticulously constructed to preserve the Tom's pedigree of no pay-for-play and speaking truth to power (in this case, OEMs with sizable ad budgets). That wall is mentioned repeatedly in our corporate material and supported by everyone at the C-suite level, I might add. The op ed article is his opinion, uncolored by revenue graphs.
• My own take is different, as is that of others.
Are you reading this in the forums? If you aren't, check them out. If you are a registered user on the forums, you'll note that there are no ads. Why? Because a while back, my team asked for and got this for users. If you are going to be cool enough to hang out with us and post, you get no ads in the forum. We get enough traffic to support ourselves, so we can turn them off for our actual active, involved users and not have a problem with it. My take is and has always been the fewer ads the better.
That said, I'm rather keen on paying the mortgage and short of going paywall or subscription (both of which are horrible), ads is how we do that for that staff that keeps the place running. If you dig us enough to read us often, consider whitelisting us. We don't *need* you to, but it would be nice to do to give back to a site you spend a lot of time on and who has content you value. If you don't, though, that's cool - that's cool. We'll be fine. My take on it is a bit more laid back than Avram's. I understand the importance of displaying ads so that the site operates and has money to do things like hire and pay reporters, but I also get that users want a clean browsing experience unfettered by solicitations for hair care products and dog treats. There's a middle ground somewhere there where we do the best we can on our end to get ads relevant to your actual wants, and they aren't intrusive enough to your experience that it makes you hate them (or us). And we also ask you sometimes to whitelist us, because asking for a sliver of monetized attention from a vast number of people is way, way better than asking for a monthly subscription from a few thousand or selling coupons for the component or gadget we've just "totally objectively unbiased-ly" reviewed.
Hope this clarifies a few things from our end.
-JP
Side note: Please keep comments constructive, whether in support or opposition. Personal attacks never fly here, whether vs. other users or staff. Civility is, as always, compulsory. 😉
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram