I'm not being snarky - but outside of Google and Facebook - who is doing really well with a pure ad model?
Every time I see this now I think of Digg and Reddit, both which seem to be having issues supporting themselves with pure ads. I actually think those two businesses and Quora could likely support a small(ish) staff and make enough revenues to make a decent profit, but I'm not sure that would get them into the decent exit category.
About.com (acquired for $410m). Last.fm was all advertising supported until last year (well after the $280m buyout). Hulu has done really well with advertising. Demand Media. How Stuff Works ($250m). Pet Holdings (Cheezburger Network). Etc etc. Plenty of web companies do just fine with advertising dollars.
Quick note - it looks like About is profitable (50M) it seems like one of the most profitable arms of NYTimes model. Can't find specifics on HowStuffWorks yet. Pet Holdings I like, but is it profitable? Hulu the jury is out, they're just cash flow positive - but they just moved to a pay model. I actually categorize last.fm and hulu slightly differently in my head then the pure, text based web plays, but that's okay.
Well you counted Facebook as a big success in terms of advertising, but they aren't exactly raking in cash. To me that puts it similar to Hulu and Demand--making significant revenue, but the real money comes from an IPO.
For the most part we're not talking public companies, so it's hard to be completely accurate. But I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of online advertising funded businesses who are providing strong returns to their partners/investors.
I think that Quora's advertising model could be similar to Google in that there is potentially a high degree of purchase intent associated with asking or even browsing certain questions. It will probably never achieve the same scale, but I can see their CPMs being comparably high.
One of the big reasons I think investors are excited about Q&A is that the model can be seen as a better replacement for search engines for long-tail, high-expertise questions. This is probably the reason Quora is trying to keep question and answer quality as high as possible. So far I think they have succeeded, although this will always be a tough thing to balance with growth.
The Stack Overflow guys seem to be building a healthy, if modest, business around Q&A based on an advertising + services (job boards, etc) model. Granted, I'm not sure this could grow into a billion dollar business, but it may be profitable.
It also seems that Quora is aiming squarely at Stack Exchange, and both companies seem to be holding their long-term strategies close to their chest. Perhaps they see some monetization strategy that the rest of us are failing to grasp?
Just a few off the top of my head: Any major blog (TechCrunch, Mashable, Gizmodo) or media website, Stackoverflow's entire network. Most well-trafficked websites take advantage of advertising in some form and support a number of employees.
However, Quora probably doesn't have to stick with "pure" ad models -- and I don't expect them to. Just because they say they aren't focusing on monetization right now doesn't mean they're completely blowing it off. The Quora team is full of some pretty smart people who I'm sure know a bit about what they're doing.
Every time I see this now I think of Digg and Reddit, both which seem to be having issues supporting themselves with pure ads. I actually think those two businesses and Quora could likely support a small(ish) staff and make enough revenues to make a decent profit, but I'm not sure that would get them into the decent exit category.