So I work at DeviantArt, and we actually saw this in real-time. A few years ago, we added external ads all over the place, and had to add a whole framework to detect “ad-unsafe” works that wouldn’t get ads served against them. So we only got ads against a percentage of views, and people were getting pissed at the ads and leaving.
So we tore the ads back out, traffic’s recovered, and a focus on providing actual tools for artists to make money through the site has meant we’re doing better without ads than we were with ads.
So I work at DeviantArt, and we actually saw this in real-time. A few years ago, we added external ads all over the place, and had to add a whole framework to detect “ad-unsafe” works that wouldn’t get ads served against them. So we only got ads against a percentage of views, and people were getting pissed at the ads and leaving.
So we tore the ads back out, traffic’s recovered, and a focus on providing actual tools for artists to make money through the site has meant we’re doing better without ads than we were with ads.
that’s the thing. People will generally support a service they like. If it has ads, most people won’t like it and thus won’t support it.