I was the editor in chief at Dr. Dobb's, which many of you know closed down in December. As I explained in my farewell editorial [1], our ad sales were squeezed by a comparatively recent phenomenon in media, which is a very steep drop in vendors' willingness to buy Web ads--a lifeline for most web sites.
The reason is that vendors have (finally!) discovered that effectively nobody ever buys anything by clicking on a web ad.
For certain consumer sites, that's a survivable problem. For example, Budweiser's ads aren't intended to make a sale, but rather to remind people of the brand. However, for many tech companies (those that aren't tier 1), they don't have the funds to do brand-oriented ads. Their ads need to result in clicks and purchases. And that's just not happening on pure websites. (FB and Twitter are a wholly different category.)
Personally, I expect that more web sites in the tech sector that have depended in the past on advertising will either fail or drastically cut back on their offerings.
So at $4.56 per thousand views, assuming one ad per page, even if an article does 20K views, that's only $91. This is why news organizations look for differentiators; it's what we did when I was at Wired and CNET, though I was on the editorial side, not advertising. Unfortunately not all news organizations succeed; Gigaom did events and had a paid research arm, but that wasn't enough. I'm also still mourning Dr. Dobb's, which I first read as a teenager. :(
Taking venture capital and starting at -$22M doesn't help.
There have been a lot of very successful and profitable media companies[0]. The industry isn't broken (far from it), just some of the models are.
This also isn't a new revelation: Arrington wrote a post on TechCrunch in 2008 warning other bloggers not to raise money[1]
Re: the effectiveness of advertising. This is a $120B+ annual industry with entire billion-dollar sub-industries involved in measuring its effectiveness and optimizing value. If it didn't work it would have slowed, shrunk and or shut down a long time ago - but rather it is growing insanely each year. Advertisers and the over-qualified engineers working in adtech are not idiots.
[0] TechCrunch (disclaimer: worked there, profitable - sold), ReadWriteWeb (profitable - sold), Huffington Post (profitable, sold for $350M+), ProBlogger (profitable), etc. etc. etc.
> The reason is that vendors have (finally!) discovered that effectively nobody ever buys anything by clicking on a web ad
There have been a few times I've seen an ad on a website that looked like it was for something I wanted, and wanted to click it.
The problem is that I pretty much ignore the ads while I'm reading the page content, and so I only noticed these ads when I'd finished the content and clicked a link to leave the page, and my eyes are wandering while I wait for the new page to start loading. I click back to try to get back to the ad, and something else has taken over its spot. I might refresh a few times to try to get the desired ad back, but that has never worked for me.
Great comment. As part of the marketing team at a well funded but very money-conscious startup, I can confirm this awareness that most web ads have no visible effect on the bottom line, or the cost of customer acquisition is so high as to be prohibitive. On the web, people are overwhelmed with marketing messages. It's very hard to find the right demographic, and then to convince them to act. This has always been true, but it has become much more measurable since the Internet came along. Unless you are a large corporation with the belief that "branding" can be bought, and the budget to back it up, there's no reason to buy online ads in most venues.
The curse of Dr. Dobbs was simply that the content was so good the ads were not able to compete for relevancy. This is a weird paradox: really good content attracts audiences but crappy content makes them click through on ads (and probably still not purchase anything but at least there is some effect for the ad buyer they can measure beyond 'impressions').
Lots of fond memories of the print edition, that's where I learned a whole bag full of useful tricks when information was a lot harder to come by than today.
I believe the issue is less that advertisers are unwilling to buy display web ads; it's more that they no longer place a premium value on buying them from branded publishers when they can reach the same users on many different websites with programmatic buying.
This hugely devalues quality publishers and increases the value of lower-investment publishers who successfully create a lot of pageviews. The latter inventory used to sell for bottom-of-the-barrel prices, but advertisers have decided it's pretty similar in value to reaching the same user on a high-quality site.
The best offensive weapon quality websites have against this trend is native advertising: create high-quality sponsorship offerings that commodity display ad impressions can't directly compete with.
> which is a very steep drop in vendors' willingness to buy Web ads
Any relative or absolute numbers you'd like to share?
> The reason is that vendors have (finally!) discovered that effectively nobody ever buys anything by clicking on a web ad.
My favourite experience with this was when I was selling a computer case and researched its specs on newegg.com. Then for a while all I saw were retargeted ads from newegg trying to sell me that case. Nonono, I didn't have one too few computer cases, I had one too many. I was the complete opposite of their target audience, heh.
With publishers dropping off like this; when will the decreased business show up in Google's revenue? Google being the biggest advertisement broker thru AdSense and similar programmes.
I'm sure that is true, but aren't we overlooking the fact that the tech sector has an extreme amount of content to offer compared to any other sector? Plus there's a large amount of content that can be had straight from the source.
I had assumed GigaOM's web property was there to lend brand to GigaOM Research, versus the advertising angle. The ability of journalists to make ad revenue is very disappointing and unfortunate across the board, though it can also be said there's a lot of really poorly researched tech journalism out there too.
If the goal wasn't a self-sufficient web business, this seems to imply (maybe?) that the "research/analyst bits were also unsuccessful.
Which I can also believe, because Tolkein's "Go not to the Elves for counsel" was somewhat written about analysts - "for they shall say both no and yes".
There is a trend towards awareness advertising - I think this is because the Super Bowl is barely more measurable than a bunch of display ads. The amount of $ spent on web and mobile advertising is tiny compared to the time spent there. If branded ads can make it on TV, perhaps that's the future rather than click through.
> effectively nobody ever buys anything by clicking on a web ad
I know I never did - at least for banner ads and other CPM advertising, but I'm not so sure it applies to the CPA sector. My impression (no pun intended!) is that sector is in a growth phase.
On the plus side, if this means the return of advertising revenue to print media, that's an interesting development. If it doesn't, then ... where is the advertising spend going to go? Mobile? I think mobile advertising is even more universally reviled than CPM web advertising! Should the penny be dropping (pun intended) there, as well?
As a 100% layman, I spent 20 mins thinking about the ad issue. The easiest way out I can find is to have some kind of location-based ad system to increase the degree of connection between a user and the ad content. Is it feasible technically and commercially? I would like to learn more. Thanks.
This is sad, and not entirely unexpected. Look for a large number of websites to go under just like Gigaom.
Oddly enough, the reason these folks are failing is that Google's CPC (the money they get for an advertising "click") has gone down Year over Year for the last 13 quarters. What that means is that if your web site depended on advertising from Google (and most do), and your traffic remained constant, you have seen a 33% drop in gross revenue over that same period. Google doesn't call out their click fraud numbers, but they do improve their ability to detect it over time, which means your "quality" click through rate has been going down as well, for a double whammy. So unless you can improve volume, you die. In their Q4 report[1] they make this note:
Network paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on non-Google properties participating in our AdSense for Search, AdSense for Content, and AdMob businesses, decreased approximately 11% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and decreased approximately 7% over the third quarter of 2014.
A third less advertising revenue on a 11% fewer clicks over all? Serious pain.
As of the fourth quarter, Google also mentions it is paying nearly a billion dollars a quarter ($968M) to get search traffic. If you're a GigaOm and your traffic is already generating less revenue and fewer clicks are getting through, you can't really add insult to injury by paying people to send you traffic.
> Oddly enough, the reason these folks are failing is that Google's CPC (the money they get for an advertising "click") has gone down Year over Year for the last 13 quarters. What that means is that if your web site depended on advertising from Google (and most do), and your traffic remained constant, you have seen a 33% drop in gross revenue over that same period.
All it means is a 33% drop per click, not per thousand visitors, or gross revenue over a same period.
As Google gets better at matching ads to users, CPC would be expected to go down, since there would be more clicks, and each click would therefore be less valuable, but there would be more clicks overall.
As a micro-publisher, the first question that friends ask to satisfy their curiosity is "How much do you get paid per click", and I have to answer that total revenue is all that really matters, not revenue per click.
My adsense money went from $1000/yr to $100/yr and now I'll be lucky if I break $25. Nothing changed with my users. My only guess is that everyone is using adblock.
I've seen YouTubers complaining about this too. One I follow (who has over 2m subscribers) says his views are up strongly in the past year (as in over 50% more) but his income has fallen by a third.
GigaOM (or, Gigaom, given the rebranding following Om's departure) was my first internship in SF. I always really respected Om. While often to the detriment of Gigaom's bottom line and readership numbers, Om was adamant about avoiding controversy and clickbait. I was always proud to say I worked at Gigaom.
There are so many tech publications, and I never knew why I should read Gigaom instead of others. Perhaps that's one reason they didn't attract enough revenue. Can anyone answer that question?
Even better: Can anyone advise what publications they would read if they were interested in innovations in technologies and in their applications, rather than in products? That is, I'm interested in innovations or developments like IoT or blockchain or HTTP/2, and innovative ways to utilize them. Generally I'm not interested in something like the latest MacBook Air; it's significant in the marketplace, but for my purposes it only marginally improves and repackages existing tech.
I actually just rely on an RSS reader to present a whole bunch of ad-free headlines to me, and then I decide what looks interesting. The hottest topics are often covered by multiple, similar outlets, and then there are also niche publishers (like gwern, for example).
Almost unbelievably, on mobile my favorite feed reader is Pulse, which LinkedIn bought a year or so back. I've used Feedly, too, and Google's Newsstand, but Pulse seems easier to scan through.
For tech-specific news, HN is the best source to meta-news that's actually technical, as well as human curated weirdness. /r/programming, /r/technology, /r/android, etc are all good, too. Whenever there's a big trade show or launch event, I usually check Pando, TheVerge, UberGizmo and a few others (Re/Code, Mashable, VentureBeat, etc). I have an IFTTT recipe that pushes any new Android app disassembly article from Phandroid and Android Police (they do a FANTASTIC job of analyzing Google app updates for unspecified changes, and also always rehost the APKs). I look for in-depth product reviews from Anandtech. I laugh at XKCD's always timely cartoons.
Note that for the ones I follow via a reader, I almost never go to their site directly, and never see any ads. I do use an adblocker (uBlock), but I am considering uninstalling it because of memory consumption. I'm on a Chromebook most of the time and between Gmail & adblockers, 4GB of RAM just isn't sufficient.
It was my site of choice because they weren't so shameless about pushing tons of clickbait on the readers. Alas, it must have contributed to its demise.
I've always found if it was really important, it would show up in my twitter feed or HN - So rather than going to the various sites, I just use those two as my meta-index.
I read a bunch of different tech sites, but it my opinion, the most relevant stuff is on HN. It basically aggregates all the best stuff from all the tech publications anyway, so you are probably just as well off in the end. Of course, if you want to read more academic articles per se, stick to the big science publications like Nature, etc.
I have visited his writings in the above link more than the actual Gigaom site. One thing i will say, is that there are some really talented journalists at Gigaom.
In the big data space, you had to read Gigaom. They cared a lot about projects like Hadoop, and it showed. Derrick Harris has been doing great work for years. RIP for a solid tech publication.
I'm pretty surprised by this, particularly in part because their events business seemed robust. My company sent me to an event of theirs in NYC two years ago, and it had a very high caliber of presenters/panelists (David Karp, Andrew Sullivan, Tim Ferriss, a few others). The tickets also weren't cheap.
Sure, the company didn't go down the clickbait road, but it also had come up with revenue models that made up for that. Beyond events, they also had a research group—something that, to a degree, arguably made their real competition Gartner and Forrester.
My personal take is that Gigaom will be sorely missed. They've had some top notch writers and they've put out a lot of great stuff lately. But.. they've also had several funding rounds over the past 8 years and when you take $20m+ over 8 years and you can't hit a crazy level of growth, the VC grim reaper rears its ugly head.
> Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral.
Sounds like a fairly hostile takeover that no one was expecting. I wouldn't be surprised to see something very similar be spun out of it, perhaps not bearing the name of the departed founder.
Thanks to Mathew Ingram for his valiant articles and twitter commentary on journalism ethics. Maybe he will consider following the Ben Thompson / stratechery business model.
I thought they were on much more solid footing, considering the funding last year and the very strong talent in their ranks. For instance, Laura Hazard Owen is one of the best reporters covering the ebook industry.
This could be a sign of things to come for other online pubs once the funding runs out. Too much competition, too little in the way of sustainable revenue sources, and not enough AOL acquisition cash to go around.
Charging $35-$45 CPMs, depending on the channel. Rates dependent on campaign duration, budget and targeting. 300x250, 300x600 and 970x250 ad units available.
Flipboard campaign: $55 CPM, over 1.5 million readers/month
"1-week channel takeover" - Gigaom homepage channel (1M+ impressions per week) $22K per week - includes two sponsored posts.
Mobile channel $15k, cloud $8k.
Sponsored posts:
$3,000 250-word sponsored post
$5,000 800-word sponsored post
With "dead tree" publications dying, and online ad supported publishing not being lucrative, how will the demand for content be satisfied?
Here in South Africa, our newspapers and magazines are in steep decline (but still profitable), and it seems everyone under 35 gets their news from ad-supported websites that are probably losing money.
Perhaps Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos were ahead of the curve. People may yet turn back to more traditional news sources, even if they are delivered via more modern mediums, such as tablets, if web advertising supported sites die.
> Every founder starts on a path — hopeful and optimistic, full of desire to build something that helps change the world for the better, reshape an industry and hopefully become independent, both metaphorically and financially. Business, much like life, is not a movie and not everyone gets to have a story book ending.
Quite daunting. Everyone hears the success stories and dreams of doing the same, or maybe even better but most fail. The reason I believe people push themselves to entrepreneurship is they ask themselves - "Why can't we? We are as smart as them and we have all the knowledge before us". Failure sucks and not everyone is capable of handling it in a positive way - "So what, I'll do better next time. I won't quit.". Perhaps, what scares me the most from my own 'business adventure'.
[+] [-] andrewbinstock|11 years ago|reply
I was the editor in chief at Dr. Dobb's, which many of you know closed down in December. As I explained in my farewell editorial [1], our ad sales were squeezed by a comparatively recent phenomenon in media, which is a very steep drop in vendors' willingness to buy Web ads--a lifeline for most web sites.
The reason is that vendors have (finally!) discovered that effectively nobody ever buys anything by clicking on a web ad.
For certain consumer sites, that's a survivable problem. For example, Budweiser's ads aren't intended to make a sale, but rather to remind people of the brand. However, for many tech companies (those that aren't tier 1), they don't have the funds to do brand-oriented ads. Their ads need to result in clicks and purchases. And that's just not happening on pure websites. (FB and Twitter are a wholly different category.)
Personally, I expect that more web sites in the tech sector that have depended in the past on advertising will either fail or drastically cut back on their offerings.
[1] http://www.drdobbs.com/240169421
[+] [-] declan|11 years ago|reply
Some excerpts:
Average CPM for business & finance: $6.15
Average CPM for technology: $4.56
Average CPM for style and beauty: $1.48
So at $4.56 per thousand views, assuming one ad per page, even if an article does 20K views, that's only $91. This is why news organizations look for differentiators; it's what we did when I was at Wired and CNET, though I was on the editorial side, not advertising. Unfortunately not all news organizations succeed; Gigaom did events and had a paid research arm, but that wasn't enough. I'm also still mourning Dr. Dobb's, which I first read as a teenager. :(
[+] [-] nikcub|11 years ago|reply
There have been a lot of very successful and profitable media companies[0]. The industry isn't broken (far from it), just some of the models are.
This also isn't a new revelation: Arrington wrote a post on TechCrunch in 2008 warning other bloggers not to raise money[1]
Re: the effectiveness of advertising. This is a $120B+ annual industry with entire billion-dollar sub-industries involved in measuring its effectiveness and optimizing value. If it didn't work it would have slowed, shrunk and or shut down a long time ago - but rather it is growing insanely each year. Advertisers and the over-qualified engineers working in adtech are not idiots.
[0] TechCrunch (disclaimer: worked there, profitable - sold), ReadWriteWeb (profitable - sold), Huffington Post (profitable, sold for $350M+), ProBlogger (profitable), etc. etc. etc.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/19/more-bloggers-raising-money...
[+] [-] tzs|11 years ago|reply
There have been a few times I've seen an ad on a website that looked like it was for something I wanted, and wanted to click it.
The problem is that I pretty much ignore the ads while I'm reading the page content, and so I only noticed these ads when I'd finished the content and clicked a link to leave the page, and my eyes are wandering while I wait for the new page to start loading. I click back to try to get back to the ad, and something else has taken over its spot. I might refresh a few times to try to get the desired ad back, but that has never worked for me.
[+] [-] vonnik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
Lots of fond memories of the print edition, that's where I learned a whole bag full of useful tricks when information was a lot harder to come by than today.
[+] [-] timdierks|11 years ago|reply
This hugely devalues quality publishers and increases the value of lower-investment publishers who successfully create a lot of pageviews. The latter inventory used to sell for bottom-of-the-barrel prices, but advertisers have decided it's pretty similar in value to reaching the same user on a high-quality site.
The best offensive weapon quality websites have against this trend is native advertising: create high-quality sponsorship offerings that commodity display ad impressions can't directly compete with.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|11 years ago|reply
Any relative or absolute numbers you'd like to share?
> The reason is that vendors have (finally!) discovered that effectively nobody ever buys anything by clicking on a web ad.
My favourite experience with this was when I was selling a computer case and researched its specs on newegg.com. Then for a while all I saw were retargeted ads from newegg trying to sell me that case. Nonono, I didn't have one too few computer cases, I had one too many. I was the complete opposite of their target audience, heh.
[+] [-] chvid|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makeitsuckless|11 years ago|reply
Wasn't it simply due for a shakeout regardless?
[+] [-] mpdehaan2|11 years ago|reply
If the goal wasn't a self-sufficient web business, this seems to imply (maybe?) that the "research/analyst bits were also unsuccessful.
Which I can also believe, because Tolkein's "Go not to the Elves for counsel" was somewhat written about analysts - "for they shall say both no and yes".
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeleeorg|11 years ago|reply
Instead, we opted to take the road less traveled — subscription revenues. [1]
Which still did not bring in enough revenue.
[1] https://gigaom.com/2014/02/20/now-that-gigaom-is-all-grown-u...
[+] [-] mathattack|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttctciyf|11 years ago|reply
I know I never did - at least for banner ads and other CPM advertising, but I'm not so sure it applies to the CPA sector. My impression (no pun intended!) is that sector is in a growth phase.
On the plus side, if this means the return of advertising revenue to print media, that's an interesting development. If it doesn't, then ... where is the advertising spend going to go? Mobile? I think mobile advertising is even more universally reviled than CPM web advertising! Should the penny be dropping (pun intended) there, as well?
[+] [-] LiweiZ|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 72deluxe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freyfogle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|11 years ago|reply
Oddly enough, the reason these folks are failing is that Google's CPC (the money they get for an advertising "click") has gone down Year over Year for the last 13 quarters. What that means is that if your web site depended on advertising from Google (and most do), and your traffic remained constant, you have seen a 33% drop in gross revenue over that same period. Google doesn't call out their click fraud numbers, but they do improve their ability to detect it over time, which means your "quality" click through rate has been going down as well, for a double whammy. So unless you can improve volume, you die. In their Q4 report[1] they make this note:
Network paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on non-Google properties participating in our AdSense for Search, AdSense for Content, and AdMob businesses, decreased approximately 11% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and decreased approximately 7% over the third quarter of 2014.
A third less advertising revenue on a 11% fewer clicks over all? Serious pain.
As of the fourth quarter, Google also mentions it is paying nearly a billion dollars a quarter ($968M) to get search traffic. If you're a GigaOm and your traffic is already generating less revenue and fewer clicks are getting through, you can't really add insult to injury by paying people to send you traffic.
[1] http://investor.google.com/earnings/2014/Q4_google_earnings....
[+] [-] Scoundreller|11 years ago|reply
All it means is a 33% drop per click, not per thousand visitors, or gross revenue over a same period.
As Google gets better at matching ads to users, CPC would be expected to go down, since there would be more clicks, and each click would therefore be less valuable, but there would be more clicks overall.
As a micro-publisher, the first question that friends ask to satisfy their curiosity is "How much do you get paid per click", and I have to answer that total revenue is all that really matters, not revenue per click.
Shouldn't improving fraud detection increase click quality?
[+] [-] petersouth|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkoberger|11 years ago|reply
Really sad to see it go.
[+] [-] treelovinhippie|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djloche|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BallinBige|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackuser|11 years ago|reply
Even better: Can anyone advise what publications they would read if they were interested in innovations in technologies and in their applications, rather than in products? That is, I'm interested in innovations or developments like IoT or blockchain or HTTP/2, and innovative ways to utilize them. Generally I'm not interested in something like the latest MacBook Air; it's significant in the marketplace, but for my purposes it only marginally improves and repackages existing tech.
[+] [-] eitally|11 years ago|reply
Almost unbelievably, on mobile my favorite feed reader is Pulse, which LinkedIn bought a year or so back. I've used Feedly, too, and Google's Newsstand, but Pulse seems easier to scan through.
For tech-specific news, HN is the best source to meta-news that's actually technical, as well as human curated weirdness. /r/programming, /r/technology, /r/android, etc are all good, too. Whenever there's a big trade show or launch event, I usually check Pando, TheVerge, UberGizmo and a few others (Re/Code, Mashable, VentureBeat, etc). I have an IFTTT recipe that pushes any new Android app disassembly article from Phandroid and Android Police (they do a FANTASTIC job of analyzing Google app updates for unspecified changes, and also always rehost the APKs). I look for in-depth product reviews from Anandtech. I laugh at XKCD's always timely cartoons.
Note that for the ones I follow via a reader, I almost never go to their site directly, and never see any ads. I do use an adblocker (uBlock), but I am considering uninstalling it because of memory consumption. I'm on a Chromebook most of the time and between Gmail & adblockers, 4GB of RAM just isn't sufficient.
[+] [-] hkmurakami|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] softdev12|11 years ago|reply
Here's a list in no particular order:
1) recode
2) pando daily
3) techcrunch
4) techmeme (another good aggregator)
5) Mit tech review
6) New York Times Bits
7) WSJ D
8) CNET
9) Mashable
[+] [-] nashequilibrium|11 years ago|reply
I have visited his writings in the above link more than the actual Gigaom site. One thing i will say, is that there are some really talented journalists at Gigaom.
[+] [-] vonnik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim_iles|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mintplant|11 years ago|reply
http://om.co/2015/03/09/a-statement-about-gigaom/
[+] [-] shortformblog|11 years ago|reply
Sure, the company didn't go down the clickbait road, but it also had come up with revenue models that made up for that. Beyond events, they also had a research group—something that, to a degree, arguably made their real competition Gartner and Forrester.
I wonder what role Om stepping away from the day-to-day played in this. What he said a year ago makes this turn of events seem shocking: https://gigaom.com/2014/02/20/now-that-gigaom-is-all-grown-u...
[+] [-] petercooper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jallmann|11 years ago|reply
Gigaom had an excellent writing staff, hope they get back on their feet quickly so we can keep reading their pieces.
[+] [-] petercooper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|11 years ago|reply
Sounds like a fairly hostile takeover that no one was expecting. I wouldn't be surprised to see something very similar be spun out of it, perhaps not bearing the name of the departed founder.
[+] [-] walterbell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sremani|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|11 years ago|reply
This could be a sign of things to come for other online pubs once the funding runs out. Too much competition, too little in the way of sustainable revenue sources, and not enough AOL acquisition cash to go around.
[+] [-] duck|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crystaln|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|11 years ago|reply
Display advertising:
Charging $35-$45 CPMs, depending on the channel. Rates dependent on campaign duration, budget and targeting. 300x250, 300x600 and 970x250 ad units available.
Flipboard campaign: $55 CPM, over 1.5 million readers/month
"1-week channel takeover" - Gigaom homepage channel (1M+ impressions per week) $22K per week - includes two sponsored posts.
Mobile channel $15k, cloud $8k.
Sponsored posts:
$3,000 250-word sponsored post $5,000 800-word sponsored post
Event sponsorships:
$5K–$85K
Research:
Annual cost appears to be $10k
1. https://gigaomabout2.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/gigaom-medi...
[+] [-] buyx|11 years ago|reply
Here in South Africa, our newspapers and magazines are in steep decline (but still profitable), and it seems everyone under 35 gets their news from ad-supported websites that are probably losing money.
Perhaps Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos were ahead of the curve. People may yet turn back to more traditional news sources, even if they are delivered via more modern mediums, such as tablets, if web advertising supported sites die.
[+] [-] juanmnl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shubhamjain|11 years ago|reply
Quite daunting. Everyone hears the success stories and dreams of doing the same, or maybe even better but most fail. The reason I believe people push themselves to entrepreneurship is they ask themselves - "Why can't we? We are as smart as them and we have all the knowledge before us". Failure sucks and not everyone is capable of handling it in a positive way - "So what, I'll do better next time. I won't quit.". Perhaps, what scares me the most from my own 'business adventure'.
[+] [-] el_duderino|11 years ago|reply