Let's clarify things that have been said but are not accurate.
Are you guys seriously advertising in an advertisement disguised as an article?
No, we are not. If we were paid for the article, we would label it as a
sponsored article, this is
not a sponsored article. This is a tech deal (as labeled) meaning that if people buy the product we may receive a small commission on the sale, as stated in the article (and other such deal posts). We try to be selective about deals we promote, essentially on stuff we deem worth recommending.
I've invested nearly 8 years of my time in your community and what you guys have been doing over the last year is seriously disappointing
That's what dissapoints me, after 8 years you should know -- I've personally been running TechSpot for almost 20! -- if there are tech sites doing shady stuff, that's up to them, we refrain from questionable practices and have a track record to prove it.
TechSpot is a business, and our model is based on advertising, we show ads, but while at it we try to make it a positive experience with high quality ads and providers. The amount of ads per page (less if you are logged in) is well below the average you see on other tech publications. We also refrain from serving intrusive ad formats. Have you been to CNET lately? That's just one example of many others who show pop-ups, video ads, autoplay stuff, stickies.. ugh. We don't. What for some is leaving money on the table, for us is committing long term to quality tech content and a good experience for our readers.
I recall you were having technical issues with one particular mobile ad format. I worked with our provider to solve that issue (last I checked it was all good). Now, you may not
like the scroller on mobile, but that's an ad format we have approved.
And even though I was told I was some "special" member who received ad free service as part of some program for long standing members I can see techspot no longer does that.
By this point you're spreading misinformation. You were invited, along with many other regulars to
beta test 'TechSpot Platinum' accounts which have no ads. The free trial lasted a whole year which expired last month. We have not promoted Platinum in any way since, even though the option
is available and we may decide to promote it later this year at which point we're likely to offer that for free to some regular members again. To read more about our take on ad blocking, see:
https://www.techspot.com/whitelist/
Ultimately, you are entitled to your opinion and if you decide to leave, it's our mutual loss. Our team works really hard to create original content that tech enthusiasts can enjoy and decide to come back to TechSpot regularly, we just can't make everyone happy and that's alright.
I think it will serve us well for the future to make it more visible to users
our take on whitelisting and ad blocking...
Browsing the web without advertisements is nice. We get that. But as you can imagine, TechSpot costs quite a bit to run – we're a small team of editors and writers, we buy hardware and software to put tests together, we send reporters to cover events, pay for web development, servers, and so on.
About 95% of our income comes from showing ads on the pages you read on TechSpot. When you visit our site with an ad blocker turned on, we cannot show the ads and cannot charge our advertisers. If we can’t show the ads, we earn NO revenue. And no revenue means no TechSpot.