Here’s some fun math. At our current rates, if you become a member of this website at our lowest annual price (a little less than $4 a month), in order for us to make the same amount of money by just seeing ads, you’d have to view a minimum of 6,500 articles a year. These calculations are, in reality, based on an ideal situation that doesn’t exist. Advertisers don’t want to show the same ad to the same person 100 times, so the more you view the website, the less money we make per ad, and it becomes something akin to Achilles and the Tortoise, which means it might actually be impossible to read enough stories to break-even relative to a member.
If you want to know why so many of the websites you love are closing or getting worse, this is the big reason. It’s not just social media, reading habits, search engines, and Private Equity that are to blame; it’s that the assumptions websites are built around (more traffic, more ads, forever) are simply wrong. It’s why so much of what you read on the Internet is either AI slop or written by content creators who work in what amount to digital sweatshops.
The big story in advertising technology this week? A bunch of companies were basically tricked into paying money to put ads on an adult website app, which means if we want to compete for programmatic advertising (the kind of automated ads you mostly see here) dollars, we have to try to beat that. Here’s a great quote from an Adweek article about this:
“This whole ecosystem is sort of like the subprime mortgage thing, where there’s really bad inventory repackaged with high quality inventory, and they say, ‘It’s good inventory!’”
This is all to say that while we’re grateful to have anyone read our work, the structure of online advertising generally makes it so that if we were a solely ad-based site, we wouldn’t be financially motivated to make stuff you’ll love to read. Someone tricked into reading a post is worth as much as someone who is genuinely interested in a story. There’s no money in brand-building. In the short term, all the money is in brand destruction: killing what’s good, firing writers, and trying to squeeze every last cent out of every eyeball.
From the perspective of the people who buy media brands, it makes a sort of sense. The chart always has to go up and to the right, so with the tools most people who run websites are given the obvious move is to reduce cost by replacing real journalists with overseas freelancers and increase revenue by stuffing some more dirtbox Taboola crap at the bottom of an infinitely scrolling stream.
Readers hate this. They hate this. Everyone knows readers hate this. Everyone feels bad about it. Almost no one changes anything.
So we’re changing it as much as we can. And not just because we also hate it (we do), but because we think that the greatest way to create a valuable and resilient media brand that’ll survive into the future is to make a product that people love to read. It’s not a sophisticated thought, but it’s a complicated one to execute.
If you’re a logged-in and paying member of this website, you’ve probably noticed that almost all the ads have disappeared. Those autoplay videos? They’re not autoplaying anymore. The little video mobile that pops up on your phone? It’s not there. The banner ads, they’re gone. This is both a “thank you” to current members for support, and an investment in the future.
A person who pays a small amount each month to this website in order to read it (and get a cool shirt, if that’s what they want) brings lifetime value that is literally thousands of times greater than someone who follows a Facebook link here and reads something once.
I did the math, because that’s my job, and the amount I suspect we’ll lose from this change is the equivalent of adding about 100 members. Many of you have told me that the one thing keeping you from becoming a member is that you have to see ads, so I’m asking you to please follow up on that statement by becoming a member if you’re able.
To clarify, this doesn’t mean that as a member you won’t see anything that resembles advertising. By not buying traffic or tricking people to read our site, we’ve assembled a large audience (bigger than a lot of legacy media brands) of people who buy a lot of cars. This place is full of people who love to wrench, or dream of wrenching. This is an incredibly valuable audience and the partnerships we do, like the one currently involving our Murano CrossCabriolet, are so fun to read that we wouldn’t want to restrict members from seeing that.
But display ads? So long as we can afford to, those are going away for logged-in paying members.
Will we adjust what kind of ads we show non-members? Probably, yeah. Our initial goal was to have 50% fewer ads than our main competitors, so maybe that number will go to 33%, or we’ll allow more ad-types. We might do some more reminders about membership to folks who aren’t members. All the same, we want people who come here to have a great experience, whether it’s their first visit or their 9,000th, so we are still aiming to make this place feel better than other sites, even for those who can’t pay for the content.
Ultimately, the more we’re interested in what members say, and the less we have to duke it out with adult-oriented apps for ad dollars, the better this website will be. While almost every other one of our competitors has to make their website worse to survive, we’ll be focused on making our website better, and I suspect that’ll result in us being the best and most valuable car site in the world (I kinda already think we’re the best).
If this sounds good to you, please consider becoming a member (also help us force Adrian into a SsangYong). And to those who made the decision to join up before this, thank you again for your support.
Top graphic images: Jaguar; Libertyware
Thank you! For all you do and create, and the way you do it. I’m in the UK, but has been great to see this website evolve and very happy to pay membership for such interesting and quality articles, and learn more about global automotive industry and history.
Somehow I first ‘found’ David and Jason on Jalopnik after getting bombarded on Facebook about Jalopnik when I was stuck on a ship in the Caribbean during covid. I think the Jeep FC rescue kept me hooked ever since!
Thank you. Take the high road and show the world that it works.
I’ve been a member from nearly the beginning, and it continues to be a better and better value. I’m so glad I’ve been able to contribute some small amount to supporting this site, and I’ll continue to do so as long as the site stays focused on your mission statement.
That math is brutal. Membership sold. Thanks for the quality content.
Thanks for the change–I really appreciate it. I just bumped up to the next level of membership.
I appreciate this change. May the internet follow your fine example, and garbage companies and sites like taboola and doubleclick and such go the way of Lordstown Motors: clearly wrong when they existed, unloved, and not fondly remembered.
This is one of maybe three sites that I like enough to pay money for, and I appreciate this change. I was actually a little surprised after I’d subscribed, when the ads had persisted.
Welp, you sold me. Upgraded to Vinyl Foreign Legion.
Salut!
Thank you! Been a member for quite a while because I want to support you all (and you’re my favorite auto-writers) but I appreciate the change a lot. This is the way to go, thank you for showing everyone else how it should be done.
I look upon my Autopian membership like the modern equivalent of subscribing to C&D or Automobile back in the day. Only there’s infinitely more content, it’s vastly weirder, and I get to interact with the other readers and writers. Plus bonus annual T-Shirt!
This. Back in the day I subscribed to Hot Rod, Autoweek, and CarToons (while it lasted in the 90’s). The Autopian is all that and a bag of chips for less money.
This great and supports my decision to subscribe. Now I’ll get no ads for Glocks. Somehow that was my algorithm even though I haven’t shopped for any even remotely recently.
If you browse at work it’s probably picking up what other people are searching on your network. I get a shocking amount of lingerie and bikini ads at work.
My work is a supermarket and I get ads for us…and our direct competitors.
After freeloading since you launched, you finally did it Matt! I became a member today. I’m so glad you are transparent about how this works so we can understand why it makes sense to consider buying in.
Thank you!
I have become a member as of today
Welcome to the party, pal.
Proud Velour member here. I love being a member if nothing else the swag I get is amazing! I subscribe to two sites — this and Defector. Both are totally worth it.
Me too!
Do you get an employee discount to subscribe here? </s>
Upgraded to Vinyl after reading this, great work guys.
Be ready for a shirt!
The thing that really bums me out is not The Autopian itself, but that it leaves me disappointed with The Aftermath.
Last year, there were times when they went days without posts, and the number of comments almost never reached double digits. I went there today for the first time in 2025, just to see what it’s like, and now they are pretty solidly posting a total of 3 per day, with a 4 former Kotaku writers and few part-time contributors.
Riley is great and I know it’s been a ton of work to bootstrap it. We’ve been outrageously lucky to have partners like Beau and Jeff. It would have been unimaginably difficult to do this without them.
The bigger question is, at what point are the advertisers going to realize that the ads aren’t finding the eyeballs they think they are? I know if you only get 1% it’s still a lot of people but how many out of that 1% actually buys something?
This type of advertising can’t possibly provide much of a return, can it?
I’ve been wondering that for a decade at least.
That’s super cool, thank you!
You really have created something special with this site, and just made it a little bit better.
This is one of only 2 sites I subcribe to, both are now ad free. Pleae consider supporting if a regualr reader. I still check in on The Old Lighting Site, but the writing has really fallen and comments are often a cesspool of greviance. Keep up the good work.
That creaking noise you hear is me finally getting off the fence. I’ve wrapped myself in vinyl, Rodius ahoy.
Hahahaha, “ahoy”
Is exactly right.
That crashing noise you hear is me driving a Rodius into your living room.
The greatest gift has been gifted, the weight of the world has shifted! Seriously, this feels like the best part of the internet from like 150 years ago, it feels light and I can breath better
Ooh you touched a nerve when you mentioned Taboola. In the days when magazines and newspapers were important media, they could – to some degree or another – vet their advertisers to ensure they weren’t outright lies or scams. Nobody seems to do that anymore and Taboola is the worst of the worst. Any website that runs their ads is automatically debased in my mind.
My work is always slow in summer, but come September I will be subscribing.
Tbh I would have paid more for no ads (as a velour member already), so getting no ads for free is very generous.
In general I think advertising is a scam perpetuated by people in advertising departments to justify their own existence. 99.99% of targeted ads I get are for shit I literally just bought direct from the manufacturer, so seemingly their logic is ‘he just bought one, I bet he wants to buy another immediately after he just bought one of X product’.
When I buy a product from a manufacturer I usually check out their other products as well so if I want to buy one or more of their other products I can add it to my order and many times get free shipping out of it, or at minimum make the most out of the flat rate.
When I get non-targeted ads they’re usually either not relevant to me whatsoever and or brainrot. Brainrot advertising really is the only reason I ever started paying for ad free subscriptions, and my default assumption is that if something has ads a significant portion of them will be brainrot crap.
Advertising budgets should be for Search Engine Optimization, providing products for reviewers (who for me are usually subject matter experts), and maybe sponsoring relevant events. Do that and you can take 95% of the old advertising budget and put it towards the necessary shit, or perhaps even to cut the budget if you have nothing good to spend it on.
Just wait for Torch’s article on why you should always wrap your taillights in parchment paper!
More effective to put the tinfoil on your head rather than the doorknob. Simple!
Bravo!
Well, you finally got me… I guess this is what it takes for me to become a paying member after reading daily since the beginning.
As a non-member I’m getting mixed messages. If taking ads away for members has a low breakeven point and this move pays for itself then how does this also result in more ads for non-members? Love the site but this message rings hollow and doesn’t connect logically. I get that members are the priority – they’re literally more valuable, but making the experience progressively worse for non-members will over time shrink your audience and take away from what makes this special. Great news for members though!
I get the sentiment and in the past would agree, but, what are they to do? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I guess that’s my point, that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re not increasing ads for me to pay for taking them from members, the membership feel (per Matt) already pays for that. I think it’s great that the breakeven point is low enough that removing ads pays for itself by making membership more attractive. I know they’re experimenting, and this one step alone won’t be the end of the site or anything that dramatic. However, the larger the gulf between the members and non-members becomes the less connected I’ll feel with the site. I’m not getting all up in arms yet, but slippery slope and all and I just wanted to point out the disconnect in the logic so they hopefully don’t go too far down the haves/have-nots path.
I already have trouble marking my notification read (or even seeing the notification) because of advertisements so it’s not like we’re going from none to minimal. We’re talking about below-average to almost average.
I don’t ever see shit. I don’t know what you are doing wrong, but whatever it is, it’s not right, lol.
Me either. It’s probably 1 of the 4 ad blockers I have installed. See my other recent; As the tech illiterate die off, said ads become less useful as signified by them paying like shit. Business will hopefully will have to go back to building good products in order for them to sell well.
Yes. I could do with better technology behind it. But that’s also all about cost. I appreciate running lean. If that means I can’t argue with strangers about cars as efficiently, then that’s ok.
Being truthful, I do not pay the membership ether. It is what it is. To me the real problem is the value that advertisers (marketing executives) think they provide a company equates to bloated salaries for said marketing executives which gets poor paying ads and here we have a media company saying well actually, this marketing shit doesn’t work very well for anyone; it pays like shit which means it doens’t work for the people placing the advertisement. I.E. Ads aren’t very effective in driving business but they do pay a lot of useless people’s salaries. True marketing is building a good product, not building good ads.
I think we are witnessing the death of trickery marketing (lying.) As boomers die off, the rest of aren’t as technologically illiterate and are able to call the spade the spade. Cheap ads from lying sacks of shit MBA marketing executives won’t work anymore; they’ll have to go back to making good products which no business executive actually does. The first sign of that is said ads paying like shit.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t see an emerging gulf between paying- and non-paying members. Ads vs no ads when you can read and participate in the comments for almost every post whether you are paying or not? No difference except the inconvenience or distraction, in my opinion.
I notice it most when I’ve read all my allowed non-paying articles for the month for The Economist or whatever and I’m denied access.
While this article spins this as ‘memberships are much more profitable,’ and that’s the right take, this math could also be spun as ‘memberships are extremely overpriced at all tiers, and members are being taken advantage of for profit.’ The cynic in me says that the site will slide into being a members-only place eventually, if there’s that much to gain from membership dues.
Edit: that huge difference also makes me question the need for sponsored posts. They’re obnoxious.
I think it’s unlikely to go members-only, but all it would take is the right investor to come along with a controlling interest in the brand.
Remember, the enshittification playbook is:
Make a thing cheapLock features behind the paywallIncrease subscription fees as enrollment risesRepeat steps 2 and 3
We’re in step 1 now. Membership fees are cheap on paper, but they clearly could be cheaper. As they get more and more fed up with people who won’t subscribe, they’ll lock more posts behind the paywall. Then they’ll increase the fees.
All of my cynicism aside, this site is slower to load than any other on the internet. Checking notifications is an exercise in futility because it never works. If members are encouraged to engage with staff, why would I pay for such poor infrastructure?
The value of a membership is not primarily ads or no ads. It’s keeping a site we all love going without the influence of private equity or other site-destroying influences.
If your sole value proposition for a membership is the price of the ads they show you then you’ve completely missed the point.
Then don’t read them? They’re clearly marked.