Subscription service Scroll allows loading series of American sites without ads

A subscription service is available under the name Scroll that allows users to consult a list of websites without showing advertisements. Part of the monthly subscription fee goes to the publishers, who in return stop showing their ads.

Scroll works with mostly American websites, such as Business Insider, Vox, BuzzFeed News and The Verge. About three hundred websites are said to have joined the initiative by now. According to Scroll, the websites load twice as fast because no ads are loaded and there are no trackers that sell the data of site visitors. Scroll says the total number of trackers through the service will be reduced by eighty percent.

The service works on desktop, tablets and mobile phones, and with different browsers. Scroll is not a browser extension and the service can use the mobile app for Android or iOS, but it is not necessary. Users can also log in to Scroll via their browser, after which the advertisements at the affiliated websites disappear automatically. This works because a cookie is placed, so that the websites in question know whether or not they should show advertisements.

According to The Verge, one of the participating websites, while subscribers are much less likely to have to deal with ad trackers, certain analytics tools are still allowed. Also, websites may continue to use affiliate links and maintain paywalls to shield some stories.

Scroll currently costs $2.50 per month for the first six months, but will cost $5 per month after that. Of that $5, 1.50 goes to Scroll; the remaining 3.50 is divided among the publishers. The distribution of that money is based on the surfing behavior of the user. So if a user visits just one of the affiliate sites for a month, that site gets the full $3.50. If a user visits different websites, the amount is split between the sites based on how often they are visited.

According to Scroll, this is an attractive model not only for Internet users, but also for publishers, because they can generate more revenue through the subscription service. Scroll argues that in the traditional model, revenues remain with the major platforms, forcing quite a few websites to close or double the number of ads to stay afloat. The company says that a normal pageview brings in about $0.011 through ads, while Scroll would be $0.016.