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"their inability to make serious revenue" To somebody like me who doesn't really understand advertising, it seems like the value of an impression ought to be r
by ShabbyDoo 17y ago
"their inability to make serious revenue"
To somebody like me who doesn't really understand advertising, it seems like the value of an impression ought to be really high for StackOverflow. Based on the tags associated with my userId and the questions I've read, they pretty much know which technologies I use everyday. How much would it be worth for EnterpriseDB (the PostgreSQL folks)to advertise to someone who is wondering how to covert his Oracle database to MySQL? Perhaps, even with 6M users, there are so few people in any coveted niche that the friction overshadows the value?
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoHow many programmers don't have some form of adblock in their browsers?
- jrockway 17y agoJudging by many of the questions on SO, I'm surprised the people asking them can even manage to use a web browser with the default settings. If someone ran a malware-ad campaign on SO, I'm sure a significant number of people would be infected.
- jasonkester 17y agoConsidering how often I rebuild my dev machines, I couldn't imagine tracking down all these obscure plugins every time I built a box. Firefox gets installed, along with Firebug and the AWS plugins, then sits idle in the taskbar until I need to use it for testing something. I'm actually surprised by how many programmers DO have adblock.
- Sukotto 17y agoSome of us automate our installs. Check out the FEBE and OPIE plugins for firefox. Host the archives someplace (dropbox works well) and write a little install script and you're done. Installing stuff by hand is so last century...
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoI'm actually surprised by how many programmers still install stuff. :)
- jasonlotito 17y agoAdvertising on SO. Sure, you can get highly targeted advertising that could help solve peoples problems. Converting Oracle to MySQL could have Oracle promoting tools to do just that on that very page. However, all those impressions are essentially people coming to the site, looking for an answer, and leaving. If the answers aren't there, they go back to Google and look for another answer. Advertising on something like SO is almost like advertising your latest application on the Pirate Bay. I just don't see the value.
- petercooper 17y agoI'd be quite keen to advertise my to-be-launched-soon coder community site (that's not competing with SO) on SO, but they have no self serve system and I'm not paying the $20+ CPM they'd probably quote if I contacted them direct.. :-)
- jasonlotito 17y agoDo that and let me know what kind of return you make from advertising on SO. Until then, everyone is "keen" until they have to open up their wallet.
- petercooper 17y agoAppreciate the cynicism, but at the right price I (and doubtless many others) would do it for sure. An advertiser's idea of the "right price", though, is bound to differ from theirs ;-) Given that developers have a low CTR.. the CPM would have to be "very low."
- larrywright 17y agoI'm not sure I've seen anybody report hard numbers on this, but anecdotally what I've heard is this: geeks don't click on ads. Any site that targets geeks has a harder time making revenue from advertising than one targeting non-geeks, by a significant margin.
- fretje 17y ago> ...geeks don't click on ads. I think it's rather "geeks don't see ads".
- petercooper 17y agoIt's worth noting that the sorts of ads most non-enterprise programming sites run aren't the sort of ads that the adblockers strip out by default (major networks, Flash, etc). You could manually add them, but I don't know if people go to the bother in large numbers if they're not horrid, intrusive ads.
- jrockway 17y agoI use EasyList, and all these ads are blocked.
- peterb 17y agoExactly. Many (most?) geeks use an adblocker.