A hint is a hint, right?

Nothing is carved in stone. We won’t know until it happens, but I’ve stumbled across a short, yet important statement that did sound positive for ads on Medium in the future.

Let’s back up.

Why ads

I’ve talked about ads numerous times in my Medium stories. Although I generally don’t enjoy ads and a system based on annoying ad blocks all over a beautiful website, I realize that ads would offer some unique benefits for Medium.

While keeping the membership structure alive, Medium could introduce ads for free, non-members and at the same time lift or change the limit of free reads per months.

In other words, free users see ads, members don’t. If you don’t like ads, you pay for the membership, if you don’t mind ads, you read for free (with possible limitations).

Are ads coming?

I am not alone. Many writers feel the same way about ads on Medium. Recently I came across a Tweet by Marcus Chan that expresses just that.

/media/3a0e083b11ce312ee52c67d6632e4a82

The interesting part was the reaction to a response to that tweet by none other than Medium’s CEO, Tony Stubblebine.

Tony said, “big plans.”

(I can’t share the tweet because Tony’s Twitter profile is private and does not allow for embedding or sharing.)

Now, this could mean anything.

But it could also mean that Tony and the team are considering ads for the platform in some form.

The bottom line

Nothing is carved in stone. This was just a hint and a rather small one at that.

Nevertheless, Tony must have heard suggestions about ads countless times. I can’t imagine the team hasn’t yet developed an idea on how to use ads in a non-disturbing and non-disruptive way.

Why wouldn’t they explore this idea?

Certainly, there are downsides to ads as well, but do they outweigh the benefits?