Two years ago, when we purchased Mexico News Daily, one of the first things we did was reduce the amount of advertising on the site by 70%. We didn’t make the decision because MND had more ads than other news sites, but rather because we felt that many ads, especially those that popped up or those that dragged along with you as you scrolled down, were really annoying to the reader.
From a financial perspective, it was a painful decision, as at that point more than half of MND’s total revenue came from these types of ads. As you might imagine, the ads that most annoy you are by far also the most lucrative ones. Sexual dysfunction cures, toenail fungus treatments, dietary supplements and chest-enhancing products (for men and women) are precisely the ads that make the most money. But most people don’t want to see them, and they are created in a way that is meant to get your attention and distract you from reading the article so you click on the ad.
Since day one, our mission has been to build an MND that we would be proud to have our name attached to, and that meant making the painful decision to remove the total number of ads from the site. I remember how nervous we were about the financial hit we would take when we made that decision, but we knew it was the right thing to do. We wanted to send a strong message to readers that we were serious about not only creating great content, but also an enjoyable experience for the reader. When we did it, I told the team that I hoped we would keep growing subscribers to the point at which we could eliminate ads entirely.
Since that decision, Mexico News Daily has worked with four different advertising agency partners (always using the Google Ad Manager platform), to try to improve the quality of the remaining ad blocks that we had. To say the least, it has been a very frustrating experience. Google has done an outstanding job at completely dominating the digital ad world, which results in media companies like MND (and the agencies in the industry) having to resort to increasingly (from my perspective) terrible ads to continue to earn ad revenue.
What do I mean by “terrible ads”? We have increasingly been seeing ads on our site (placed by the agencies through Google Ad Manager) that are very deliberately trying to trick the reader. Ads that say “Click here to continue” or “Click here for customer service” or “Click here for a rebate coupon.” All of these ads falsely and deliberately give the impression to our readers that they are MND ads, only to take readers to another site that tries to trick them further into giving credit card or personal information. We obviously hate those types of ads, and despite many, many attempts to block them, they keep popping up with different URLs (website addresses). It is a never-ending game of wack-a-mole and it gets more difficult each day as the ads become increasingly sophisticated, thanks to artificial intelligence tools. So as a result, we decided to take proactive action.
It is with that backdrop that we are announcing today that MND is removing all external advertisements from our site, effective today. We want to be able to control all of the content on our site and ensure that our readers are never being tricked into clicking on something that is not part of MND. Our guiding principles are a great reader experience as well as one in which our readers can trust any link on our site.
This decision, of course, is yet another financial hit to our business, as we will now be reliant exclusively on subscription revenue to pay our team members, fund our software expenses (we need over 30 back-office software subscriptions to make MND run smoothly), and invest in growth initiatives. Tamanna and I still have yet to take one peso of salary in over two years, but we are confident that this is the right strategy. There will be short-term pain, but we will continue to build a better MND.
Our team takes very seriously our role to provide you with an apolitical, unbiased, and balanced front-row seat to Mexico across our news and features sections. It is a very exciting time for the world and for Mexico, and we are honored to be a trusted, reliable source of news and information for you.
Thank you for supporting MND and please consider sharing MND with family and friends so they get to know us as well. We make a great Christmas gift! 🙂
Travis Bembenek is the CEO of Mexico News Daily and has been living, working or playing in Mexico for nearly 30 years.
