Can Readers Opt-Out from or Remove In Text Ads?

When Visitors Complain about In Text Ads

Sometimes, despite their subtleness and clear advantages to the website’s publisher, visitors do complain about the introduction of in-text ads to a website. Most often, this would happen when a website has a community of regular visitors who are not always open to changes. From my experience, the number of complaints will be very low when compared to the number of visitors and they will also disappear after a short while. Nonetheless, sometimes a publisher must deal with the complaints. This is especially true when the complaining visitor is an important member of the community or simply a noisy one.

Before the Complaints, Be Transparent and Explain

The best way to respond to complaints about in text ads would be to avoid such complaints entirely by being transparent and explaining to your visitors why you are adding the ads to your website. Sharing with your readers the need for advertising revenues to cover your costs and keeping the content free will build a stronger relationship with them. If you highlight the advantages of in text ads, you will most likely avoid all complaints. Your in text ads network should have a ready-made paragraph that can help you with drafting this explanation.

The best place for an explanation would be in a blog post or in your FAQs section. Sometimes, especially for dynamic content websites and blogs, a link from the sidebar to this explanation would keep transparency and gain appreciation from your readers.

Yes, Visitors can Opt-Out from, or Remove In Text Ads

If complaints persist, you can offer your visitors the choice to actively remove in text ads. Theoretically, this will lower your potential revenues, because the removing visitors will not click on ads, but in real-life, such complaining visitors are unlikely to click anyway.

How can users remove in text ads Easily. Your in text ads network should be able to provide you with a link that will enable visitors to opt-out. This link would usually lead to an explanation about the ads, and then visitors will be able to choose to remove them. Technically, such visitors will pick up a cookie to their computer that will tell the in text script to refrain from highlighting links for such users.

Having this option for visitors to remove in text ads should also be helpful in internal discussions when you need to persuade the team to accept the new form of ads.

Smart Ad Placement for Returning Users

An extreme case for removing in text ads could be when you choose not to show them at all to your returning users. Some websites have a core community of frequent users. Such returning users can be an important part of the website’s goals, but in certain cases, they simply don’t click on ads, yet they do get annoyed by them. If you have such users, you probably know them already. They can be identified by how they reach the website – for example, by direct approach as opposed to Google search, or by being logged in as a registered user.

If you know that your core community of visitors generate much less per-per-click (PPC) advertisingrevenues because they simply don’t click on ads, it could be wise to remove PPC ads from their user experience entirely (you would still be able to gain some revenues by display ads that pay per impression).

Removing In Text Ads for Returning Users

How can you remove in text ads for your website’s returning visitors First, you need a method to identify them – a cookie, sign-in, or their approach link could do the trick. Then, in your design, have the in text script run only on pages that are loaded for other users. If the balance of new and returning users in your case is relevant, you can also focus on the other group, for example – identify the visitors who arrive to your website through Google and other search engines and have the script run only for these users.

Please note, this will lower your revenues and you should take this fact into consideration before removing in text ads to entire groups of users. However, in the overall balance of your website, it could be a solution for avoiding complaints from regular users while still monetizing other sources of traffic to your website.