

Ask HN: Thought Experiement: If HN ran ads, how much would PG earn - rgovind

HN is a high traffic site. I expect that if they ran banner ads or contextual ads, like google does, they would make good cash. I am curious to know how much money they could make this way. If you were in charge of HN ads division, what kind of ads would you run and what CTR, CPM would you expect?<p>EDIT: Just from a traffic point of view. Lets also assume no one leaves the site because of that. Just trying to see how the traffic-revenue correlation works in this case.
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drpgq
I can't think the user base are going to click on any ads.

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coryl
Why? HN users tend to have income, and probably spend money on
work/productivity related products. Example ads: hosting, programming tools,
job boards, vc/legal services, startup services, etc.

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incision
Anecdotally, I'm not sure I've ever clicked an online ad intentionally. If I
have, it was during the 90s.

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digipaper
Anecdotally, I click on relevant ads or ads that interest me all the time.

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t0
This would help:
[http://ycombinator.com/images/hn6.png](http://ycombinator.com/images/hn6.png)

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rgovind
Thats like 1.5M page views per month. Assuming eCPM of 0.5, it would fetch
7500$/pm. This is a rough calculation.

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nicholas73
It looks to me like 1.5M per day. The chart is a daily chart with clear
weekend pattern drops.

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Torkild
If HN ran ads I would no longer use this site.

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seiji
You realize this site is one big ad for YC and its minion fledgling not-
always-entirely-legitimate companies, right?

The job of this site is to legitimize up and coming nothings in the eyes of
you, the dear early adopter.

You've been had.

In other news, have you heard companies are hiring to CREATE DELIGHTFUL
PAYROLL and for MINOMONSTERS (because nobody actually wants to work on that,
they have to post job spam every two days) and, oh, look, immad has thrown up
his 200th job advert for zerozap again too.

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Torkild
I know what this site is and I can use it for my own purposes. But having to
see popups or god knows whatever other eyesores would no longer make it
worthwhile even in such minimal regards. I could care less about startups or
especially anything relative to marketing or investment. But the factoid
linkages are the real gold. I only care about information, not Capitalism. Not
in the slightest.

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thifm
Oh no, one more of those stupid discussions. I wonder why it gets upvoted.

