Why Ad Blocking Matters to Vulture

If you’re reading this post, chances are you got here because you have an ad-blocker turned on and saw a message asking you to consider white-listing Vulture.com. If you did white-list this site, thank you for doing that. If you haven’t white-listed Vulture yet, give us 20 seconds to explain why we hope you will.
 
As you might imagine, Vulture costs quite a bit to run – we have to hire editors and writers, pay freelance writers to write TV recaps and other articles, send reporters to cover events like ComicCon and the Sundance Festival, pay for web servers, bandwidth – the list goes on. The primary way we make money is via digital advertising – showing ads on the pages you read on Vulture. We also make a small commission from links to Amazon, Hulu and other partners. But 95% of our revenue comes from advertising. When you visit our site with an ad blocker turned on, we cannot show the ads and cannot charge our advertisers. If we can’t show the ads, we earn NO revenue. And no revenue means no Vulture.
 
We understand the larger dynamic of ads on the Web – ads often slow the loading of Web pages and ads sometimes intrude on the reading experience. Some advertisers track and target users without being clear and transparent about that tracking and giving users easy ways to opt out. We’re pursuing several initiatives to improve the Vulture ad experience: We’ve set rules for our advertisers about the maximum allowed file size and loading time for ads. We are in the process of retiring some of the more annoying ad formats on our site, based on feedback from our readers. And we’re working with other top news and information websites to set shared standards for improved ad experience and tracking transparency. We’re rolling out these improvements bit-by-bit.
 
We deeply appreciate your loyalty. Please help us continue to invest in the site by whitelisting Vulture and the other sites in the NYMag network.
 
Thank you

Why Ad Blocking Matters to Vulture