1% CTR is a high estimate for Adsense on a site like Stackexchange. 3% is downright fantasy.
SE is basically a forum, and forums are notoriously difficult to monetize with general ads. I think it'd be better to hire a sales person and get ads from companies that want to advertise to the coder-demographic directly. They'll be able to command higher prices, and do so based on CPM instead of clicks.
>1% CTR is a high estimate for Adsense on a site like Stackexchange. 3% is downright fantasy.
I came here to stipulate something similar, but I figured I'd back it up with at least something of an anecdote.
How often do I click on AdSense ads? Ready for it? 1 to 2 per month. 2 per month would be generous. I'm not the type to block ads either (at least, not currently).
I'm a typical advertising network's worst nightmare. I click on virtually nothing that someone is trying to push on me. I rely on curated advertisements that... often aren't advertisements. For example, blogs and tweets from very trusted sources. Advertising networks like The Deck have a better hit rate, but, not amazingly so.
On top of that, while my conversion rate is high, the amount of things I buy overall is rather small. What I buy is exactly what I want (or I think I want), and nothing but. Random noise almost never sways my opinion. I know I'm not representative of the entire StackExchange (or StackOverflow) audience, but I know that folks like me are a reasonable portion of it.
The Stackoverflow community are tech savvy programmers and IT geeks - and the entire audience for that site run ad blocking software in their browsers. That's why Adsense won't work for monetizing that traffic.
Here are some arbitrary numbers, I know they're fantasy but let's roll with it anyway. Now let's pare those down to something equally arbitrary but maybe more believable. Let's do some multiplication and.. end article.
No way are they going to pull a 1% CTR. Nor does this take into account any of the other variables.
SE is basically a forum, and forums are notoriously difficult to monetize with general ads. I think it'd be better to hire a sales person and get ads from companies that want to advertise to the coder-demographic directly. They'll be able to command higher prices, and do so based on CPM instead of clicks.