Every business needs a revenue source to be able to operate their normal course of business operations, and here in the online publication business, we often have to rely on advertising revenue as the main source of income. We know that nobody likes seeing ads while browsing the internet as some of them are often annoying or simply not that engaging, not to mention when not optimized properly, they may also slow down websites and eat up your valuable internet data.
Google as an owner of one of the biggest advertising platforms, AdSense, knows this all very well, and to overcome the problem of increasing usage of ad blockers and to save publisher’s interest, it launched a new program called Google Contributor back in 2014. Basically, the program allows participants to select an amount of monetary contribution which they will pay each month in the program, and in return, whenever a participant loads up a website which is powered by the Google’s advertising program, Google will replace some of the ads with a “thank you” banner. Currently, the Google Contributor program is only available in the US, but now it looks like the program will also no longer be available in the US either.
Google has now started sending out emails to existing Google Contributor users in the US, notifying them that the service will be closed down for a temporary period of time and that they will no longer see ad replacements while browsing the websites starting mid-January 2017. Google says they will discontinue the current version of Google Contributor in favor of the new service they are planning to build. As for existing billing and payment status for the service, Google clarifies that the users will not be billed for the service starting mid-January and that those who have a remaining balance in their Google Contributor account will receive the refund to their credit or debit card. According to Google, we could expect the new Google Contributor service somewhere in early-January, but it’s not clear exactly when this new service will come into play. It remains to be seen whether this new version of Google Contributor will also be limited to the US only or if the service will be expanded to other regions as well.