The short answer: The solution you are looking for is "Limited ads". This is Google cookie-less ad solution. I don't think I am allowed to post a link here, but we wrote this up last week on the OKO blog. It's very new, it's very beta and performance is not great. It'll likely improve as the cookie situation continues to develop though.

Alternatively you could sell advertising directly.

However, if you are that anti-advertising and it is only bringing in "pennies" why not just lose the ads completely?

@matbennet, thanks, if possible send me the link, I'm interested on reading what you mention. Direct advertising is something I've done in the past and while it was never my goal: it's fast, simple, profitable and practical allowing me control of what I post, besides it replaces one or two units of other ads. The only problem with this is getting the clients and closing the deal, that's not that easy and it's a long separate topic.

I'm not anti-advertising exactly, it's described above (I'm clueless on why the question as it was posted, as the SEVERAL factors were detailed above), it's the user experience, mostly. And yes, I'm 100% add free by now. As explained on other threads, advertising o Adsense was never the goal (so NO MFA), but eventually placing ads was an opportunity that paid well and wasn't as intrusive or slow, now it is.

I'll PM you a link to some info on limited ads.

Direct ads always result in less layers of tech and a larger share of the sale price for the publisher. It comes with overhead though - there is a reason the complex programmatic system exists.

Thanks matbennett. Just read the article. Cool.

In general I can say a few things. Advertising is good, it promotes business, products and there is a benefit for the publisher and also for the users, but many times (I don't have the link to this old thread), it can produce lazyness on the publishers creating an opportunity for systems to proliferate, this has been discussed a few times specially on Adsense threads, but it's been a while since deep discussions take place, most nowadays are about "I'm earning 10% compared to last month, what about you?". I don't blame them, the system doesn't work as in the past but my point here is, many websites have actually sold their souls and as they are, will keep loosing profit because anyway, they are not bringing anything new to the user, even the presence of such automated ads scares away any potential clients.

I just agree with some older forum member on Adsense and other alike systems mean too much sacrifice on our own websites, might sound weird to some, but it's just that we have diff views (and websites).

Right now... I don't exactly want to close doors with Google Adsense, but I don't want to show any ads (and I'm not doing it, I'm ad free), but getting such accounts sounds difficult these days, and if I don't show ads for X period of time (around 6 months) my account will be closed. I'm not too optimistic on where Adsense will go in the following months, but it's good to keep the doors open in case things improve. After all I do want what most decent webmasters want: a nice, relevant and useful website providing a good user experience.

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But... and I will take some space to expand this...

I posted my opinion on this on other threads. Advertising income is really low compared to the kind of traffic you have to keep daily, that's fine, I get it. But I don't fully understand how demanding people have become (mostly out of lazyness) regarding advertising income. Most cases are doing so bad with low earnings, they could bake one chocolate cake per month and sell it fully replacing replacing their "ad business". On other cases they just need to sell 2 cakes and that's it.

Things get more interesting when we consider the skills needed to create and manage websites, and most people refuse to sell those or monetize them in some way, this is contradicting as it prooves somehow their low income via advertising. I believe our own ad space could be used to sell our own services and skills, this can work for some, not for everyone. On the cases where this works, ugly slow ads are something to be removed quickly.

"Advertising income is really low compared to the kind of traffic you have to keep daily, that's fine,"

I couldn't disagree more. Advertising consistently provides the highest yield for the KIND OF TRAFFIC you have to keep. Not necessarily the VOLUME of it. Advertising can potentially monetize every visit. A tightly targeted affiliate or lead gen site can earn more per visit, but each visit is higher effort.

I've worked with many sites earning 6, 7 and even 8-figure advertising revenue annually. That would be pretty expensive cakes ;) If they could have earned more per visit for the same traffic they would have. Advertising is mass medium monetisation. There is not reason it has to be the only channel though or even the right one for every project.

We are talking about diff things.

And while I'm not saying low income by advertising is the case for most people, your argument sounds like the opposite, stating advertising being a highly profitable business, it's not, specially when there is a difference between "websites", meaning big figures coming (perhaps) businesses, VS sites built by just one person and this person is the on man band (why not hire? that's been discussed before. Back to advertising: it's been discussed several times and by people who have B&M sites with decent traffic in this forum. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I don't see a reason to disagree, just: diff things, and one doesn't have to make the other invalid. What to do remains a personal choice, but if you are familiar with some of my posts and threads since 2018 (specially), I disagree with people selling their souls, but they can do what they want, I'll do what's best for me.

In case it's not clear, I'm not bragging, my websites have made more money that I would have expected and it was not just to buy beer and cookies or small gadgets, but some other expensive stuff, I'm happy and grateful, but as also said on another thread, things have changed and it feels like the new ever changing rules make you work for Google, not for yourself. So, as any other business relationship: whenever it's not good, it's over.

I don't remember who said it, perhaps martinibuster (sorry I don't recall) many years ago, how advertising and selling links can mean money, but they are also an exit door from your site. I believe there are things that create a gap on approaches, one of them bing age (younger webmasters are willing to do things older webmasters don't, but that already explains why my sites have 21 years and counting), on the other hand I see people complaining about earnings and I can't say I disagree, but if we are able to create such simple/complex things as websites to earn money via advertising, it's kind of contradicting when someone says it's the only way they can do money and can't take in count monetizing their skills (that's different than just monetizing a website).

Again, I believe we are talking diff things.