Page views required to generate $1M in ad revenue?

300 million in page views net $15K in revenue. Not a business I want to be in. Google makes a very nice living because people who are googling are looking for information and the ads provide links to information. People who are socializing are not looking for something, they are already there. Most of the time the ads are even below the level of annoyance. (Mouseover videos are definitely over the threshold.) CPC vs CPM doesn't address the issue. Radio and TV ads work because you cant avoid them. Print ads works because people do scan newspapers in search mode.<p>The real issue is how to engage people when they are socializing. The advertiser needs something more engaging the current social event. Sex sells and flash sells, but the post is talking about something beyond that. I dont think target advertising is much more than the same old same old, but more refined. The break through will be something that enhances the social experience.<p>Maybe something like a chat about Paris brings up a live feed of a Paris cafe complete with tables for your avatars, with an urchin trying to sell you a travel guide. Whatever it is it needsto be engaging an not annoying.

What sites like Facebook and Twitter need to do is infer peoples needs from things that are happening to them in the moment. For example, if a user posts to their feed "My POS car broke down" They should be shown ads for new cars, repair shops, car rental and AAA. If a FB user invites 30 of their friends to a Halloween party they should all be shown ads for costumes and other related things.<p>FB and Twitter have the ability to preempt Google because they could predict your needs from your updates before you even know them yourself. As it stands though Facebook advertising strikes me as being about as effective as putting up a billboard on the side of a highway.

&#62; <i>But, based on a survey of social network sites let's assume an average CPM of $0.40. You would need 2.5 Billion page views per month to earn $1M in ad revenues. That is 2,500,000,000 page views...and how many sites can sell out all their page view inventory?</i><p>This makes the mistake of assuming that one page impression = one ad impression. That's not the case on most sites. Most sites can quite easily have 2-4 ad impressions per page impression.<p>Also, it's not hard to sell out ad inventory at ridiculously low CPMs. There's always <i>someone</i> willing to pay <i>something</i> for a genuine ad impression. Most sites can probably sell a little bit of their inventory for a high CPM and the rest for a very low one.

Trying to make that sort of money using something like an Adsense program is going to take a hell of a lot more pageviews over having a sales force capable of selling high-dollar ad packages.<p>That isn't to say that sites like PlentyofFish haven't been able to do it, but your CPM has to be fairly high if you're not getting billions of pageviews a month.<p>Sourceforge doesn't get nearly the level of traffic that Facebook does, but they brought in $5.4 million in media revenue from 36 million uniques in their first fiscal quarter of '09[1].<p>1. <a href="http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=155376" rel="nofollow">http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=155376</a>

Hmm, not even counting the cost of content creation, how much is it going to cost to produce 1M in ad revenue?<p>They mention 2.5 billion views for $1M. Being very, very conservative in data transfer, that's several terabytes a month. 4k/page is 10 TB (3.858 MB/sec sustained for a month), 32k is 80 TB (30.864 MB/sec for a month), etc. A single banner image off of gamasutra.com (not even flash) was 149k.<p>The netlink, server hardware, and infrastructure (bought or rented ala rackspace) isn't exactly cheap.

I think it's pretty clear that the best way to make money from a site is to sell things. For money.Crazy, I know.

Google CPC works because it ties in buyer behaviour with advertisers. The solution to driving revenue from pageviews must either connect up existing behaviour with advertisers (where can I buy an X), or create a compelling new behaviour. For example, in the early days of newspapers, it wouldn't have been obvious to look in the back for classified ads, but buyers learnt this and now know to look in the back for the ads.<p>The power in social networks is the group of trusted friends. I'm sure some sort of group question along the lines of 'do you guys think I should buy an LCD or Plasma TV' with voting, or something similar, would develop new behaviours, particularly amongst consumers of products they aren't completely familiar with (anything from cars to financial products). Once you develop this behaviour in a social network, selling ads into it is a cinch.

Uh.. audience matters. Like, a lot. If you think all impressions are equal, then you will only be able to attract lowest common denominator advertisers who will only pay you commodity prices. Why do you think washingtonpost.com has ads for asbestos lawyers?<p>If your site is for luxury yachts owners, or people looking to buy Enterprise CRM systems, or is specially tailored to Fortune 1000 CEOs, you can charge CPMs that most sites only dream of. With a dedicated ad sales staff You could probably clear a million with a few hundred thousand page views a month.

The thing that is difficult about ads, not many people like to be told what to buy. And I think it might be the ads themselves that are lacking, not necessarily how they are delivered.<p>For example, look at this award winning Pringles online ad: <a href="http://awardshome.com/cannes2009/pringles/can-hands.html" rel="nofollow">http://awardshome.com/cannes2009/pringles/can-hands.html</a><p>The reason why this one is great, is because it isn't pushy, it has humor, and it uses normal, honest language that we can all relate to. Maybe it's these type of ads that need to be displayed in the social networks.

Last time I analysed revenue from ads per visitor the figure was between 0.0025 and 0.004, so 1000 views means 2.5 dollars at the low end or 4 dollars at the high end, so maybe the problem is limited to social networking sites alone. How can they make money? Perhaps freemium is the best way? I mean these people, well some of them, well most of them are addicted to Facebook and all the rubbish in it such as quizzes and friend poking, so if it costs say £2 to I don't know, send your friend the perfect girl questionnaire, sure some people will pay and if it goes hot and viral then all of them will pay, they have to.