Update: Donations and Google Ads

Two developments took place last week which I would like to share with readers.

Before I do that I would first like to thank everyone who has made a donation to DTNZ. Donations were reinstated on September 26 after a 2+ year halt. The response has been tremendous and I cannot thank all those who donated enough for their generosity and messages of support. You have really made a difference. Thank you so much.

The issue of donations ties into the two developments I mentioned above. These are: scalability and monetisation.

The trajectory for DTNZ, both in terms of its size and readership, is one of growth. Every month the website gets ‘physically’ bigger (in terms of its storage requirements), and in terms of the number of people accessing it.

There comes a point where a critical state is reached where these factors begin to impact on user experience, because the servers are not able to handle these increasing demands. In the context of a news and information website this means frequent ‘403 errors’ or timeouts, unpublished comments and other content loading failures, as the servers have reached their performance capacity (theoretically at 400,000 visitors per month) and when that is exceeded they start to return the errors. On top of this DTNZ is under constant cyber attack, which presents a further drain on resources.

This is an issue of scalability and without significant investment in new tech and servers, it is basically pointless to continue. Scalability becomes a road block that can only be navigated with deep pockets, or content monetisation – and unlike the legacy media, we have neither.

I foresaw this problem, which is why I called for donations last month. But what I didn’t predict was its rapid onset.

Tech support warned me last week that the critical point had been reached and that if I didn’t act the website would crash, not just once, but consistently. All dynamic content was removed, which included existing ads, to lessen the load temporarily.

Some may recall that our aim was to design and implement an internal ad system that was not reliant on ‘Big Tech’, primarily to guard against the risk of cancel culture – the risk that monetisation income would not be paid or cancelled due to the nature of some of DTNZ’s content. A framework for that ad system was implemented earlier this year, but it has been one of the main causes of scalability problem I have described, due to its load on server resources – a real Catch-22 that will require us to go back to the drawing board on that issue.

Since DTNZ’s inception I had made numerous applications to various online advertising services up to around 2023, to monetise the site, all of which were declined. Three unsuccessful applications were made to market leader Google AdSense between 2021 and 2023, which were all declined due to our ‘unapproved’ content, especially in regards to COVID-19, ‘woke culture’ and the Ukraine conflict. As a result a significant amount of advertising revenue has been lost – revenue that would have easily funded the investment required to address the scalability issues DTNZ now faces.

Faced with the critical situation of persistent server crashes I made an off-the-cuff, late night decision to apply to Google AdSense again, never believing it would be successful. An automated message came back saying the application was under review, a process which could take up to four weeks. Well, what do you know? – within a day I received an email from them saying DTNZ had been approved. I still can’t quite believe or explain their change of heart – perhaps Google has chilled out a bit with Trump’s ascension to the U.S. Presidency, and we really are seeing the end (for now) of Joe Biden’s industrial censorship complex.

Visitors will soon see third party hosted ads appearing on DTNZ. This is the only way at present for DTNZ to provide continuity of service. Third party hosted ads do not use the resources of our servers. It is a temporary measure only until the stability issues are resolved and the investment is made into a hosting framework that will future-proof the website for many years to come and on which we can build a standalone ad system.

Thank you.
Malcolm Dreaneen
Editor