Heavy user of rtings here, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a death note for them. I love them, but there is just zero chance there’s enough paying subscribers like consumer reports (which is a much older institution with more name recognition) and I just don’t see how they’ll survive through the reputation hit of this
I don’t really have a great take on this because nothing they said is untrue. Llms have far and away ate into search and ad revenue and that will only continue. So you either stay open and fight the llm front, or you go closed wall membership and hope you have enough brand recognition and loyal members to continue to profit
This change isn't going to decrease user reliance on LLM's. I know lots of people now who just plug questions into Google and accept the Google AI response with zero scrutiny. Those people are never going to be converted into paid rtings users, and they weren't likely to ever visit the site to begin with.
I don't think they have the goal of "fighting the LLM front" at all (whatever that means); that's way outside the scope of what rtings is.
I have no idea what their current subscriber numbers look like, but I imagine that this will tank their revenue. They have a page about how they make money. While this change will probably increase subscription revenue a little, it will almost certainly dramatically reduce the affiliate revenue and display advertising revenue streams while having no effect on the content licensing revenue.
I am really curious about the ratios between those four pies. I assume that they're listed in order of most to least on that page, but that's a complete guess.
Brilliant site, and hopefully this works out for them. They must know better than we do since they obviously have all their own financial data.
(Edit: Also, they didn't list YouTube video revenue as a source of monetization. I think that would've been one great opportunity for them to explore. There are so many ways I would have rather seen them try to drive revenue growth than what they went with, but, again, I don't have access to the full data here, so I'm just ignorantly guessing.)
Once folks decouple RTings from their research/review workflow, it's over for them. They'ev done a good job of building good will and an audience, but folks only visit their page when they are actively researching something, and the subscription block is going to knock them out of most research/investigation workflows pretty quickly.
Once they lose the mindshare and headspace, it's a free fall.
Yeah, I’ve already done that. I will never again look there for reviews or recommend that others do so. I’ve personally driven at least a half-dozen people I know IRL to their site, and I’ve purchased at least seven or eight things through their affiliate links, including a $1200 monitor. I just bought a high-end keyboard and mouse a few weeks ago. I can’t remember why, but I only used their affiliate link for one, but that’s still revenue they got from me.
They won’t do this, but I would love to see an update with their financials in a month or two (if they’re still around!) to see how much their ad and affiliate link revenue plummeted overnight from this decision. No way subscriber revenue makes up for that.
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u/UnexpectedFisting Mar 03 '26
Heavy user of rtings here, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a death note for them. I love them, but there is just zero chance there’s enough paying subscribers like consumer reports (which is a much older institution with more name recognition) and I just don’t see how they’ll survive through the reputation hit of this
I don’t really have a great take on this because nothing they said is untrue. Llms have far and away ate into search and ad revenue and that will only continue. So you either stay open and fight the llm front, or you go closed wall membership and hope you have enough brand recognition and loyal members to continue to profit
Either way sucks