HN Explorer

Ask HN: Thought Experiement: If HN ran ads, how much would PG earn

9 points by rgovind ↗ HN
HN is a high traffic site. I expect that if they ran banner ads or contextual ads, like google does, they would make good cash. I am curious to know how much money they could make this way. If you were in charge of HN ads division, what kind of ads would you run and what CTR, CPM would you expect?

EDIT: Just from a traffic point of view. Lets also assume no one leaves the site because of that. Just trying to see how the traffic-revenue correlation works in this case.

15 comments

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t0
This would help: http://ycombinator.com/images/hn6.png
rgovind
Thats like 1.5M page views per month. Assuming eCPM of 0.5, it would fetch 7500$/pm. This is a rough calculation.
nicholas73
It looks to me like 1.5M per day. The chart is a daily chart with clear weekend pattern drops.
Torkild
If HN ran ads I would no longer use this site.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
seiji
You realize this site is one big ad for YC and its minion fledgling not-always-entirely-legitimate companies, right?

The job of this site is to legitimize up and coming nothings in the eyes of you, the dear early adopter.

You've been had.

In other news, have you heard companies are hiring to CREATE DELIGHTFUL PAYROLL and for MINOMONSTERS (because nobody actually wants to work on that, they have to post job spam every two days) and, oh, look, immad has thrown up his 200th job advert for zerozap again too.

krapp
What if PG sold ad space to HN users? Plenty of people here would doubtless pay to be able to drop something into a text-only banner at the bottom of the page or something.
Torkild
I know what this site is and I can use it for my own purposes. But having to see popups or god knows whatever other eyesores would no longer make it worthwhile even in such minimal regards. I could care less about startups or especially anything relative to marketing or investment. But the factoid linkages are the real gold. I only care about information, not Capitalism. Not in the slightest.
drpgq
I can't think the user base are going to click on any ads.
coryl
Why? HN users tend to have income, and probably spend money on work/productivity related products. Example ads: hosting, programming tools, job boards, vc/legal services, startup services, etc.
rgovind
I think what GP means is that the crowd on this website are savvy and will just ignore the ads.
coryl
I'm not sure about that. I mean, this whole place is inadvertently an advertisement for the Ycombinator program. And people click the YC company job ads all the time too.
incision
Anecdotally, I'm not sure I've ever clicked an online ad intentionally. If I have, it was during the 90s.
digipaper
Anecdotally, I click on relevant ads or ads that interest me all the time.
thifm
Oh no, one more of those stupid discussions. I wonder why it gets upvoted.