Thursday September 24th 2026
This is the message that will appear for regular readers.
Written by Midlothian View Editor, Phil Bowen
Regular readers of Midlothian View may notice a new message appearing on the website as we trial another way of helping to fund our independent local journalism.
We are introducing a new system which means that, after reading a number of pages on the website, readers may be offered the option to view a short advertisement before continuing.
Readers who choose to view the advert will then be able to continue reading Midlothian View without seeing the message again for the next 24 hours.
The system, called Offerwall, is provided by Google and is being introduced initially as a trial.
Midlothian View is an independent local news website. Producing the news every day takes time and money, from reporting and photography to running the website and the technology behind it.
Unlike many news websites, we don’t want to put every article behind a subscription paywall. We want Midlothian View’s local news to remain accessible to as many people as possible.
We already offer readers the opportunity to support Midlothian View through a monthly subscription, and advertising from local businesses and other organisations also helps fund the service.
Offerwall gives us another potential source of revenue, particularly from our most regular readers.
Under the trial, readers can browse a number of pages normally. When the Offerwall appears, readers will be given the option to view a short advertisement. In our testing, some adverts have taken as little as six seconds to complete. Once completed, the website will be available to them for the following 24 hours.
There is no need to click on or interact with the advertisement itself.
Like independent local publishers across the UK, we are continually looking at ways of making local journalism financially sustainable.
Midlothian View has a large and growing readership, but only a small proportion of readers currently choose to become paying subscribers.
Advertising therefore remains an important part of how we fund the journalism we produce.
The Offerwall trial allows us to see whether there is another way of generating advertising income while continuing to give readers access to Midlothian View without requiring everyone to take out a paid subscription.
We’ll be monitoring the trial closely, including how often the message appears, how readers respond to it and whether it generates enough additional revenue to make it worthwhile.
If it works, we’ll keep it. If it doesn’t, we’ll change it or remove it.
Most importantly, we want to find a balance that allows Midlothian View to continue producing independent local journalism while keeping our news accessible to the Midlothian community.
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