[brk]

(Anonymous)Visitors is not a very useful or valuable metric. Blindly pumping content into the ether isn't going to convert to value, or cashflow.

I think we are seeing the advancing erosion of (generic)ad-supported free content and services. Which is not necessarily a Bad Thing.

If you can't be bothered to identify yourself with an account, then these services do not get much value from you, and many times see you as loss/overhead, so limiting access to their content is logical on their end.

[itronitron]

Failure of imagination, or even just a memory fault. If I have a website that is focused on content relating to heirloom tomatoes during the week and artisanal firewood on weekends then I should be able to sell advertising space on my site during the week to grocers and on the weekends to woodstove manufacturers. It's not that complicated.

[kooshball]

your understanding of ads industry is decades out of date. this is not how digital ad is bought or sold today for small content creators