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I've spent a lot of time over the last few months looking at different privacy focused forms of monetization, specifically aimed at search engines because of my

I've spent a lot of time over the last few months looking at different privacy focused forms of monetization, specifically aimed at search engines because of my use case. [0] The main factor determining your options is whether you are comfortable having a 3rd party ad provider have access to the IP, user agent (and potentially search term in some cases) of your users. If that is not a dealbreaker for your use case then there are a lot of different options, including EthicalAds which I believe is a great service. Understandably, the main reasons for this are because the ad networks need to prevent fraud, and the ad sponsors usually want some kind of measurable metric to determine ROI. If you are not comfortable with the above compromise then your options for contextual advertising are significantly limited with the only real option being to sell direct ads to companies. [0] https://coil.com/p/runnaroo/Privacy-and-Search-Engine-Monetization/5dXAW6NwF https://coil.com/p/runnaroo/Privacy-and-Search-Engine-Moneti...

wintermutestwin 6y ago
>with the only real option being to sell direct ads to companies. Maybe I don't understand the complexity behind the ad-network curtain today, but direct ad sales worked fine pre-internet. Serve the ads from the same domain as your content and you can prevent ad blocking. Sounds like a win-win to me.
- chris_f 6y ago
  >Sounds like a win-win to me. Yeah, I agree. The challenging is finding the relevant companies who wish to advertise and the ad 'sales' process. It's significantly more work than just plugging in an existing ad network who has a ready supply of ads, and it requires a slightly different skillset that's not necessarily a core competency. I'm going through the process right now of reaching out to relevant companies with an aligned privacy focused and it is a mixed bag of results. Having said that, I think it is worth it in the long term because it makes you less reliant on other companies, but it is a tremendous amount of work upfront.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  Almost all companies won't bother with buying ads directly from a random small company, because they don't know if you are trustworthy or won't show up some controversial content that hurts their brand. Much easier to use an ad bundler (from their standpoint) like google.
olah_1 6y ago
How does Coil not have _all_ of your data, though? They maintain centralized knowledge of everything you look at and for how long. Or am I missing something?

wintermutestwin 6y ago

>with the only real option being to sell direct ads to companies. Maybe I don't understand the complexity behind the ad-network curtain today, but direct ad sales worked fine pre-internet. Serve the ads from the same domain as your content and you can prevent ad blocking. Sounds like a win-win to me.

chris_f 6y ago
>Sounds like a win-win to me. Yeah, I agree. The challenging is finding the relevant companies who wish to advertise and the ad 'sales' process. It's significantly more work than just plugging in an existing ad network who has a ready supply of ads, and it requires a slightly different skillset that's not necessarily a core competency. I'm going through the process right now of reaching out to relevant companies with an aligned privacy focused and it is a mixed bag of results. Having said that, I think it is worth it in the long term because it makes you less reliant on other companies, but it is a tremendous amount of work upfront.
NotSammyHagar 6y ago
Almost all companies won't bother with buying ads directly from a random small company, because they don't know if you are trustworthy or won't show up some controversial content that hurts their brand. Much easier to use an ad bundler (from their standpoint) like google.

olah_1 6y ago

How does Coil not have _all_ of your data, though? They maintain centralized knowledge of everything you look at and for how long. Or am I missing something?