On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 00:53, Marcus Buck <me(a)marcusbuck.org> wrote: Thanks for making approximation! I was thinking that WMF and chapters would have much more money with ads. However, ~$100M is not so bigger amount than $20-22M. Besides that, all chapters except WM DE are far from reaching the limits (while WM DE is not so close to reach the limits). Also, organizations should have capacities to spend money, which should be built through the time. In other words, it seems that we definitely don't need ads.

That's capitalized value, but does reflect an estimate of net annual revenue of at least $500 million. Fred

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 11:38, Peter Coombe <thewub.wiki(a)googlemail.com> wrote: Wikimedia organizations (WMF and chapters) don't have capacity to spend $100M now; it will have it in few of years. And money from fundraising is increasing well, which means that $100M will be reached probably in that amount of time. Fred said that annual revenue is estimated on $500M. I would say that the potential is much higher and that it is comparable with a developing country with 10-20M of inhabitants. However, unlike three years ago, we are now in the phase when other factors are much more important than money. Structuring the network of organizations and global movement itself is much more important than getting money which is not possible to spend in this moment of time.

On 11/6/2010 4:19 PM, Robert Rohde wrote: I agree that About.com is a better comparison, and one I touched on in the Signpost a few years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-02-28/Vertic…). And it's interesting to see that maybe the site's revenues could begin to justify the price the Times paid for it after all. But in our context, I think it's worth mentioning reasons why scaling the revenues proportionally would likely produce erroneous estimates. By working toward a particular market niche, About.com can draw a decently reliable if unspectacular audience. It will never be the destination of first choice, but most of what's there has enough value in advertising terms that it can be monetized. In fact, it is easier to monetize than Wikipedia, which would be much less efficient to sell ads for, both on the high end and the low end. At the bottom of the scale (from an advertising buyer's perspective), Wikipedia has a huge swath of low-value inventory consisting of little-trafficked pages and material of extremely marginal commercial interest. This is almost inevitable for sites with a massive scope, which is why there's still some appeal to Facebook as a point of comparison, and the problem is trying to package or even give away remnant inventory. You get a different problem at the top of the scale. For the stuff that really draws massive attention, topics where Wikipedia really shines - a tsunami, a new pope, a pop star dying - efforts to monetize such traffic spikes elsewhere have proven largely ineffective. Trying to market that inventory to advertisers is like chasing a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow: you can't recognize the right inventory, connect with the right potential buyers, or do an effective job of selling it fast enough before the traffic has passed you by. Considering the problems at both the top and the bottom, part of the reason that About.com has survived this long may be by occupying the middle. In terms of selling ads, Wikipedia might be able to command a premium for its prominence, in the same way that advertising in the New York Times carries a premium because it's a "paper of record" to so many people. But in many other ways, Wikipedia is not a great proposition against which to sell advertising. Perhaps it should be no surprise that this is so, considering that Wikipedia was not designed or built for the purpose of being a great proposition against which to sell advertising. --Michael Snow