For a long time many readers have asked us whether they could pay to get an ad-free version of TPM. Well, now you can. It’s not ad-free. It’s ad-lite. Dramatically fewer ads and none of the intrusive ads like pop-ups or modals or that ‘bumper’ ad at the bottom of the page. Until now there was no way for us to do this. But with our new publishing platform we can. So we’ve added it as one of the features you get when you subscribe to Prime.
As I said, it’s not ad-free. There ads. We’ll likely reduce the number of them over time. But it’s a little hard for us to predict the exact financial impact because the people most likely to become members are the ones most likely to consume lots and lots of pages.
As I said, we get rid of all the intrusive, in your face ads. And then we reduce the number of the standard box and banner ads you see around the web. The public front page now has 7 ads. The Prime version has 3.
On news story and editor’s blog pages we created a cleaner, less cluttered layout, in addition to ditching most of the ads. You can see what it looks like here. One ad at the top, one in the text and that’s it. Basically, just you, a nice full picture and the text you want to read and not a lot distracting extraneous stuff besides.
There’s a lot of other stuff you get with a Prime membership, which you can see here. If you’re interested, it’s $50 a year, just 14 cents a day. A cleaner, faster version of the site with original articles, forums and special features. And it’s also a great way to help us keep bringing you the news everyday with our dynamic TPM staff in NY and DC.
