> Web advertising on content is no more, nor any less, effective than web advertising in a printed magazine.
1) Things like AdSense? You're right. The real money is in sponsored content. Just ask BuzzFeed, Forbes, Huff, etc. There's a saying from advertisers when you confront them about traditional print/broadcast advertising success "when sales go up, it just works, you don't question it".
> That is why advertising on content needs to shift to a performance based model
2) Not all advertising is about direct click through to purchasing. Coca-cola, Pepsi and every car manufacturer in the world spend billions a year on advertising simply for brand recognition alone. No one is buying a coke because they saw an ad on Facebook, but they sure as hell associate drinking a coke with happiness because that brand association is pretty ubiquitous nowadays.
I think the OP is insuitating that they should have never been a $3mil business in the first place, which is consistent with your story about your purchase behavior. How many ChuckMcM's are there gonna be have to be that purchase products on Digikey in order to provide $3mil worth of business?
> How many ChuckMcM's are there gonna be have to be
> that purchase products on Digikey in order to provide
> $3mil worth of business?
In this case we've got the numbers from the article, 10.3 million page views means they need a nearly $300 RPM in order to make $3M a year. So yeah, even Google doesn't make $300 RPMs. I wonder if that is the correct number. When I first read it I read 10M page views a DAY not a YEAR. At 10M page views a day they need an RPM of about $0.82 to make $3M/year.
Where does that leave us? Well wondering things. Alexa says they see about "40k visits/day" so 1.2M a month, (that would be closer to 14M/year). 40K visits a day though and clearing $83K/month (1M annual run rate) is like close to $69 RPM. That is pretty good for a content web site.
It means that if they can keep half the visitors going to a paid model, they need to charge 2 USD a year to make 3M. Not counting what they save on not having to run or sell ads. Who here wouldn't pay quite a lot more than that not jus for Dr. Dobbs - but a much more independent (or obly beholden to its readership) Dr. Dobbs?
1) Things like AdSense? You're right. The real money is in sponsored content. Just ask BuzzFeed, Forbes, Huff, etc. There's a saying from advertisers when you confront them about traditional print/broadcast advertising success "when sales go up, it just works, you don't question it".
> That is why advertising on content needs to shift to a performance based model
2) Not all advertising is about direct click through to purchasing. Coca-cola, Pepsi and every car manufacturer in the world spend billions a year on advertising simply for brand recognition alone. No one is buying a coke because they saw an ad on Facebook, but they sure as hell associate drinking a coke with happiness because that brand association is pretty ubiquitous nowadays.
I think the OP is insuitating that they should have never been a $3mil business in the first place, which is consistent with your story about your purchase behavior. How many ChuckMcM's are there gonna be have to be that purchase products on Digikey in order to provide $3mil worth of business?