Inside LINK is a weekly column from our CEO, Lacy Starling. If you have questions you’d like Lacy to answer, email her at lacy@linknky.com.
I don’t think it’s news to anyone (pun intended) that what we’re doing at LINK has to be paid for somehow. Since we don’t have a paywall, we have to do that through donations to the NKY Community Journalism Fund, and advertising on the site.
It was important to us, however, to make sure that the reading experience on our website was as pleasurable as possible. Too many news sites (and sites in general) load up their pages with Google ads, popups, those annoying header ads that cover the top of the story until you scroll for a day and a half, and videos with microscopic X’s that are almost invisible when you are using your phone. (I always end up hitting the wrong spot and watching the stupid video.)
We also were not interested in gathering or selling the information about our readers to any of the ad services in the world. (I’m looking at you, Google.) We don’t use cookies, or track data of the people who use our site. We also don’t use any ad services like Google to place ads on our site.
Every single ad that you see on LINKnky.com has been purchased directly from us by a local business and was placed by our own production staff. The ads don’t change based on who you are, what websites you’ve visited before you came to our site, or your Facebook habits. The same ads show up for everyone.
This may seem old-school, but it is important to us for two reasons.
First, we want to create an authentic Northern Kentucky experience for our readers and our advertisers. National ads aren’t bad, certainly, but helping our local businesses get the word out to our readers feels good to us. National advertisers have plenty of ways to do that. Local businesses, not so much.
Second, all of us have become much more aware of the creepiness of internet advertising in the past few years. Seeing an ad on your phone for something you just mentioned in front of your Amazon device is not the most comfortable feeling. We’ve come to realize that if we’re getting something on the internet for “free,” more than likely, it’s the sale of our personal data that’s paying for it.
Knowing that your data is safe from us, and that all the advertisers are local, I’d encourage you to give any of the ads you like a click, and checking out what they have to offer. Keeping small businesses in business is good for our community, and we certainly appreciate our advertisers’ commitment to local journalism and our audience.
