After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

AdSense Economics & Alternatives

  • Many report AdSense revenue collapsing over time: from mortgage-covering or $15k–$20k/month in the 2000s to under $1k/month now, despite similar or higher traffic.
  • A tool with ~250k daily views earned ~$500/month at peak, later dropping to ~$36/month, making tax complexity barely worth it.
  • Some attribute declines to: shift of spend to social networks, AI search reducing traffic, and low pricing for developer audiences with high ad-blocker usage.
  • Others argue ads “aren’t dead,” citing Google’s massive ad revenue and news sites still depending on ads, but note generic network traffic (e.g., AdSense) has poor quality.
  • Suggested alternatives: Ethical Ads (no cookies/tracking), other ad networks, direct sponsorships, or abandoning ads entirely.

Quality, Security, and Abuse in Ad Networks

  • Recurring complaints: deceptive “download” buttons, scammy/sexual/misleading ads, malware risk, heavy tracking, and huge JS payloads.
  • Several recount bans or withheld payments over policy violations or click fraud (sometimes inadvertent or guided by Google reps), with little recourse or support.
  • Some see network policies as full of “footguns” that both enable fraud and justify bans; others emphasize publishers’ responsibility to follow clearly stated placement rules.

Ethics of Ads and Ad Blocking

  • One side: ad blocking is framed as unethical “free-riding” on ad-supported content, violating an implicit attention-for-content contract and threatening free services.
  • Counterarguments:
    • Security and privacy (malvertising, surveillance) justify blocking; some organizations even recommend blockers.
    • Users control what runs on their own devices; refusing JS or external resources is likened to muting TV ads or leaving during commercial breaks.
    • The contract is negotiable: if sites don’t like blockers, they can refuse content; if they still serve it, that’s acceptance of the user’s terms.
  • Some are anti-advertising on principle; others accept “decent, fair, static” ads but reject current tracking-heavy practices.

Ad Blocker Adoption and User Behavior

  • Estimates mentioned: roughly 13–30% usage in some contexts; higher in tech circles but still far from universal.
  • Anecdotes: many everyday users don’t use blockers and even feel the web is “broken” without visible ads.
  • Some never use blockers to “support” sites by tolerating ads; others treat ad blocking as a baseline security requirement.

AI, Platforms, and Future of Ads

  • Declining YouTube creator revenue is linked by some to AI tools displacing search and to competition from AI-generated video.
  • Others expect ads to migrate into LLM outputs, becoming harder to detect or block; a counter-vision is widespread use of local models to strip or avoid such ads.

Legal Liability & Content Moderation

  • Turning off ads is seen by some as helping classify a site as “non‑commercial,” potentially lowering exposure under various legal regimes (copyright, defamation).
  • A long subthread argues for stronger liability when platforms actively promote or fund content versus merely hosting it neutrally, with safe harbors tied to neutrality in selection and incentives.

Cultural Attitudes and “Selling Out”

  • Several comments highlight the tension between running ads and personally blocking them, with some calling it hypocritical and others calling it self‑protection.
  • There’s nostalgia for an era when “selling out” was condemned; now influencer-style sponsorships are normalized, even when products turn out to be scams.