We’re making a change: from August 2024 onwards, we’re ditching ads and trying something different.
Over the past year, Pickr has made several changes to deliver a better website and a clearer way to get research from an independent Australian technology publication. We cleaned the design, we put more useful review information at the start of the stories, and even added a table of contents to pages where it mattered. We’ve also cleaned the fonts and are making little tweaks here and there.
And now we’re going to do something different. Something we’ve not really seen another publisher try.
Pickr is doing something bold: it’s going ad-free. Not just ad-free, but all free. No logins, no affiliate links, no bias, no BS.
It’s a bold approach that we feel is needed because ads dominate the browsing experience of so many websites. Ads are at the beginning and in between paragraphs. Some websites make it feel as if you’re reading an ad with the article spliced between.
And when there aren’t ads, there are affiliate links. They’re ads, but in a different way. You get warnings, sure, and affiliate links can be helpful, but they also might leave you wondering whether you’re getting a genuinely independent and bias-free experience all the same. Some publishers do it better than others, that’s for sure.
Advertising permeates the reading experience in such a way that it almost seems like it would be refreshing to NOT have ads.
So that’s what Pickr is doing: no ads.
For many reasons, too. Not just because they’re distracting, but because they’re difficult to police and maintain. Google doesn’t run due diligence on its ads, leaving scammy ads as part of what can appear on your site, something we wrote about earlier this year. It’s frustrating.
Ads have one purpose: making money. That’s it. It’s why every publisher does it.
But we think there may be a better way for publishers to make money without ads and without risking bias. It’s why we’ve been working on something, and if successful, we want to expand on the idea to helping other publishers be successful with a platform that can do just that.
In testing the waters with something aimed at being unique, we could eventually help keep publishers afloat.
Pickr is an independent technology news, reviews, and analysis publication, and we’re intent on staying independent. This could do just that.
For now, enjoy the lack of ads. We’ve updated our advertising policy accordingly, and aim to keep it this way: ad-free.
