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And I could make an argument that your userbase is more likely to ignore/block ads (although my guess is that you're serving the ad itself, so AdBlock wouldn't

And I could make an argument that your userbase is more likely to ignore/block ads (although my guess is that you're serving the ad itself, so AdBlock wouldn't work). I've had a fair amount of experience experimenting with all sorts of online marketing techniques, and it's just an awfully costly experiment to shell out $1,500 for a week. If you had a Reddit-style minimum of $20, then the CPM wouldn't be a complete non-starter for an experiment, but that's a very, very high bar. Of course, you have a pretty rabid fanbase, so early advertisers are probably going to get a higher-than-average CTR because users are going to want to support you with their clicks, but that's just going to end up artificially depressing advertisers' conversion rates, which DDG won't have any insight into. So, I guess all I'm saying is 1) consider lowering your rate and 2) consider dramatically lowering your minimum. Remember, kids, AdWords are a gateway drug to unprofitable user acquisition.

epi0Bauqu 16y ago
Points taken. I also do a lot of online advertising experiments, and so I know exactly where you are coming from. Really it's more that I just don't want to spend a lot of time on this right now, as I know the reddit team has. Ideally I'd love to syndicate either the deck network, reddit, or someone similar, though no good options seem available to me atm.
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, why are you reinventing the wheel on search advertising? Is there something you find fundamentally flawed with AdWords-type ads? Seems like monetizing a search engine is shooting fish in a barrel, getting it to grow would be the business challenge.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Isn't this almost what DDG is avoiding? That would just violate the less spam and ads point. Unless you kept it to say one ad per search term or something.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Ads on search are fine with me if the results are (consistently) better than google consider me switched. Someone ought to do an extensive (say a month long) side by side review of google, bing and ddg and see how good it really is in practice. If I could spare the time I'd do it.
  - webwright 16y ago
    Great point-- I imagine this is quicker for him that an adwords clone, which might require some clickfraud protection, self-serve flow, payment processing, etc. AFAIK, the OP is just one person... I recall reading a study about who clicks on ads, and the OP's demographic is decidedly not it. You can play the "pay per click" game if your audience clicks. Otherwise, he might have better luck with the "pay per influence" stuff that The Deck does. To the OP: a question regarding your stats page. Would you be willing to post more stats? Specifically, I'd love to know how many uniques visit more than 10x per month. In other words, how many people are using you as a primary search engine in their life?
    - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
      You're right--I'm focused on improving search results right now. As for stats, I don't have those as I don't store IPs (http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html & http://ye.gg/ddgp http://ye.gg/ddgp). I do know that before the switch (to no IPs) I had about ~500K page views and ~150K uniques, so scaling that up I'd estimate 360K uniques (worldwide, i.e. compete.com is just US). I still don't know how many are 10x/month, but obviously much lower.

epi0Bauqu 16y ago

Points taken. I also do a lot of online advertising experiments, and so I know exactly where you are coming from. Really it's more that I just don't want to spend a lot of time on this right now, as I know the reddit team has. Ideally I'd love to syndicate either the deck network, reddit, or someone similar, though no good options seem available to me atm.

mattmaroon 16y ago
Out of curiosity, why are you reinventing the wheel on search advertising? Is there something you find fundamentally flawed with AdWords-type ads? Seems like monetizing a search engine is shooting fish in a barrel, getting it to grow would be the business challenge.
- robryan 16y ago
  Isn't this almost what DDG is avoiding? That would just violate the less spam and ads point. Unless you kept it to say one ad per search term or something.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Ads on search are fine with me if the results are (consistently) better than google consider me switched. Someone ought to do an extensive (say a month long) side by side review of google, bing and ddg and see how good it really is in practice. If I could spare the time I'd do it.
- webwright 16y ago
  Great point-- I imagine this is quicker for him that an adwords clone, which might require some clickfraud protection, self-serve flow, payment processing, etc. AFAIK, the OP is just one person... I recall reading a study about who clicks on ads, and the OP's demographic is decidedly not it. You can play the "pay per click" game if your audience clicks. Otherwise, he might have better luck with the "pay per influence" stuff that The Deck does. To the OP: a question regarding your stats page. Would you be willing to post more stats? Specifically, I'd love to know how many uniques visit more than 10x per month. In other words, how many people are using you as a primary search engine in their life?
  - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
    You're right--I'm focused on improving search results right now. As for stats, I don't have those as I don't store IPs (http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html & http://ye.gg/ddgp http://ye.gg/ddgp). I do know that before the switch (to no IPs) I had about ~500K page views and ~150K uniques, so scaling that up I'd estimate 360K uniques (worldwide, i.e. compete.com is just US). I still don't know how many are 10x/month, but obviously much lower.