The Problem with Wrestling News & Your Privacy
How many times have you come to a wrestling website to be bombarded with ads that pop up, slide into view, push down your content? It happens all the time because the website needs to make money. Your ad views and clicks to make a few cents that will hopefully build up to enough money to pay the bills. The problem is you're paying more with just your ad views and clicks. Each time an ad displays it learns more about you. It learns your age, gender, location, what you like or don't like, and then follows you across to the next website to repeat the cycle. It's hard today to find a website that doesn't try to track your every movement. Let's take a look at how visiting an average wrestling site you're being tracked and how we at The Daily Smark go out of the way to respect your privacy.
Wrestling Sites Love Banner Ads
Banner ads are pretty much on every wrestling site today except for The Daily Smark. We do not believe in showing banner ads. We want your experience to be amazing and not an avalanche of advertising. While banner ads are a quick way to make some money it's a sacrifice imposed on you the visitor. I decided to take a look at the top wrestling sites to see how much they rely on ads and how this affects you when you click the link.
| Wrestling Site | # of Ad Trackers |
|---|---|
| Fightful | 15 |
| The Wrestling Observer | 33 |
| POST Wrestling | 14 |
| PWTorch | 29 |
| Wrestling Inc | 41 |
| WrestleTalk | 73 |
| Pro Wrestling Sheet | 14 |
| The Daily Smark | 0 |
Note: These stats were taken using Safari 14 on July 24, 2020. These numbers can fluctuate on every page load as different banner ads can be displayed to you.
The number of ads tracking you are more than just a handful. Each one can learn your age, gender, precise location, and so much more. For this valued information, each wrestling website is paid by the ad view or click. As the old saying goes if you're not paying for the product you have become the product. The Daily Smark doesn't treat the visitor as the product because every time you visit us or download our app you are using the product.
Analytical Tracking the Wrestling Fan
Analytics can be a pretty powerful and helpful tool to measure how to effect your website really is. You can get insight into how many visitors are using your website and what content or features work well. Looking at the top wrestling websites I see that all of them are using Google Analytics. Analytics itself is not bad but Google Analytics tracks more than just a page view. Just like banner ads, it tracks your age, gender, location, etc, and sends that data across its own Google products. This is why The Daily Smark does not use Google Analytics because the last thing we want is for any visitor's information to be tracked and monetized.
What Do You Do Now?
Now the question is how do you get your wrestling content without sacrificing your privacy? One option is to use a web browser such a Safari & Firefox that informs you of any privacy-invasive websites and ad trackers. You can also use our website The Daily Smark since we do not use a single banner ad. We do not use privacy-invasive analytics. We do help you find wrestling content in the simplest way possible. Due to the goal of delivering the most reliable wrestling news, we do redirect you to websites that may contain banner ads and other tracking information. This is why we highly recommend using one of the previously mentioned web browsers along with an Ad Blocker. This will ensure your privacy is safe, secure and you get the best experience with your wrestling content.
