We Switched from Google Adsense to EthicalAds
By Cajetan Bouchard
Background
Google Adsense blocked us multiple time, due to too many ads clicks in a short period of time. This block lasts about 8 days every time and it means that we are loosing money during that period.
We decided to look into alternatives, and listen to you all. You want your privacy to be respected (and we totally understand that).
We switch to EthicalAds in order to respect our users privacy and prevent the use of third-party cookies on FOSS Torrents.
The following is an actual ad from EthicalAds, you can expect to see at most of these per page.
Benefits
EthicalAds does not track the user. They use the content of a page to decide which ads to display. This means they don't use tracking cookies like Google Adsense to propose an advertisement that you may like.
The only thing they track is your IP, which they convert into a 50 miles radius. The reason is some publishers only want their ads to be displayed in a few selected countries. EthicalAds will remove your IP from their database after a few days. Also, if you are using a known VPN, they will display a generic advertisement in order to respect your privacy.
They pay per ad views, not by ad clicks. After a using it for a few months, we have calculated that they pay about 1¢ per 8-9 page views. This is a really good turn out for us as we get almost 35¢ per day in revenue (compare to 1 or 2 ¢ with Google Adsense, when their is not ad clicks).
They also have a 50$ payout minimum limit, compared to 100$ with Google Adsense. This is great for us as we can get payed every 4-5 months instead of once a year with Google Adsense.
Drawbacks
In order to maintain the website up and running, we must keep displaying ads on the website. We hope that one days this won't be necessary.
Conclusion
Ethical Ads is currently our solution for advertisement, as they respect the users' privacy and they do not use cookies to display ads.
This is our first step to "De-Googlify" our service. Next step is Google Analytics.
Until then, stay safe, and thank you for using our platform.
Cajetan Bouchard
I am a professional software developer, and founder of FOSS Torrents. I am a proud father and happy husband. Apart being an avid Linux and Open-source lover, I love playing sports (any racquet sports), mountain bike, downhill skiing, and many more.