On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
My key point
was that I'd personally prefer opt-out targeted
advertising for two weeks out of the year to what Wikipedia has right
now.
I doubt it would make as much money, though, so it's irrelevant.
Advertising can make a lot of money, but if it's opt-out and only
lasts two weeks, I can't see it rivalling a fundraiser. The results of
our fundraisers are measured in the millions, could we really get
millions from two weeks of ads?
First of all, I don't think opt-out is going to make significantly
less than forced-in. Opt-in advertisements would be significantly
less effective, but I don't think many people would choose to opt-out
and I think the ones that chose to do so would be the least likely to
click on the ads anyway. But feel free to double my amount of time if
you'd like, I'd still feel the same way. Secondly, the last time I
calculated it I estimated that it'd only take 2 weeks of Google
Adsense ads to make enough money to fulfill the WMF's budget. If you
want to make some updated calculations, feel free.
Oh hell, I'll do it. Let's say $2 CPM (that's low according to
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-google-adsense), on 7
billion page views per month
(
http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/06/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-traffic).
That's $14 million a month, which would mean roughly $7 million from
two weeks of ads.
Triple my numbers if you want, and Wikipedia could make $4.6 million
in a month. And I'd still personally prefer a month of opt-out
targetted text ads to the current fundraising messages.
And that's all I'm talking about in this message. My personal
preference - which would be less annoying to me personally.