Who needs ads? TidyRead strips them from websites

May 8, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Just in case newspapers (and just about everyone else) weren’t having enough trouble making money from online ads, there’s a growing number of browser tools like Readability that let you strip those ads away. TidyRead is a new one that works pretty well and has been rolling out a number of features in the last couple of weeks, including support for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Once you’ve set things up properly, TidyRead works pretty much the same on your computer and on your mobile device — you just hit a button on your browser, then the service brings up a version of the page you’re on (say, a VentureBeat article) in a nice, simple layout, with text, images, and no ads. It’s a little harder to set up on the phone. You either sync your bookmarks between the desktop and mobile versions of Safari (a pain if, like me, you don’t use Safari on your computer), or you manually use your phone to bookmark a specific page on the TidyRead site, then edit the link down to the relevant JavaScript. But on a phone, the benefits are bigger too, because there’s so much less screen real estate, so ads or any other wastes of space are much more annoying.

Other new features include a bookmarklet called TinyTidy that allow you to create shortened URLs (via TinyURL) that link to TidyRead-processed pages. Site owners can also add some code that creates a button on their pages, and when a user pushes the button they get a TinyRead version of that page. But why the heck would a publisher want to make it easy for a reader to ignore their ads? I asked TidyRead’s Matthew Chen, and he pointed out that it’s a convenient way to create a mobile version of a site.

As for revenue, Chen says he’s thinking of three possible ways to make money: A service for site owners to create mobile pages, placing advertising along search results of TidyRead pages (that’s right, an ad-hiding service plans to make money through ads; oh the irony), and licensing the technology to other companies. TidyRead is based in Cupertino, Calif., and is self-funded.

Even more interesting than how this service can make money is what will happen if it starts to take off — there’s bound to be some resistance and backlash from publishers. I definitely hope that most of you don’t start reading VentureBeat pages without ads. Please.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • RahulC
    Very neat service. But with my limited understanding - most companies generate revenue from their ads displayed on blogs or webpages. At times many companies are surviving on revenues from ad only, they might have to approach it in a different way by stressing on user experience.
  • We should make it clear that TidyRead doesn't intent to block ads, we just create a clear view for users to read, either on the web, or on the phone. The most important thing is that TidyRead won't put ads on the article pages. We are thinking to develop the system to let users save links with the article text, then they, or all the internet users can search through those pages, then we may advertise on the search result page.
  • Advertisers (and sites that survive on web ad displays) must love apps like this. There's no such thing as a free lunch, people.
  • stine
    It depends on the payment model. If your website gets paid for the display of the ad, then you'll still get your revenue. If you rely on clicks, then you'll lose out.

    In my case, I black-hole route advertiser networks, so while my pages continually display 'page not found,' i never connect to or download adds.
  • Sure, but substantial number of users start reading a site through TidyRead, then advertisers aren't really gonna want to pay-per-impression, since that impression is going to be a fleeting one before the user clicks through to the TidyRead page.