I know of a few sites that run off of ad revenue that are doing fine. The difference is these sites have a small staff that delivers low maintenance content. The big companies that are not turning a profit have high maintenance content being supported by a large staff. It turns out there is actually something to this Web2.0 thing.
I disagree, and here is my thinking: Any typical print magazine/paper supports itself on ad revenue. Your ‘subscription cost’ doesn’t even cover the postage in many cases, let alone the production and printing costs. Subtract out the printing and mailing costs, and it shouldn’t be too hard to make a go of it. The issue so far, I think, is that internet ads are under-priced compared to their print equivalents, and the internet ad sales are structured entirely differently. With print, you don’t have AdSense (or whoever) taking a cut; the ad revenue goes to the content provider directly. The only significant shortcoming on the net is that there isn’t any way a full page ad will ever play…
There’s money to be made selling ads, just not lots of money in most cases. Google’s an exception because their ads are so well-targetted and effective. And I say that as a guy who will spend six figures this year on Google Adwords at his day job – the damn things really do work!
I think the linked post is sort of off-track, though. Without the politico.com Web site no one would have heard of the print version.
August 6th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I know of a few sites that run off of ad revenue that are doing fine. The difference is these sites have a small staff that delivers low maintenance content. The big companies that are not turning a profit have high maintenance content being supported by a large staff. It turns out there is actually something to this Web2.0 thing.
August 6th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I disagree, and here is my thinking: Any typical print magazine/paper supports itself on ad revenue. Your ‘subscription cost’ doesn’t even cover the postage in many cases, let alone the production and printing costs. Subtract out the printing and mailing costs, and it shouldn’t be too hard to make a go of it. The issue so far, I think, is that internet ads are under-priced compared to their print equivalents, and the internet ad sales are structured entirely differently. With print, you don’t have AdSense (or whoever) taking a cut; the ad revenue goes to the content provider directly. The only significant shortcoming on the net is that there isn’t any way a full page ad will ever play…
August 6th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Have you heard of Google?
August 6th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Google is a bit different in that it sells the architecture for ads that everyone else seems to lose money on.
August 6th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
There’s money to be made selling ads, just not lots of money in most cases. Google’s an exception because their ads are so well-targetted and effective. And I say that as a guy who will spend six figures this year on Google Adwords at his day job – the damn things really do work!
I think the linked post is sort of off-track, though. Without the politico.com Web site no one would have heard of the print version.