[Foundation-l] Benefits of advertising (was Re: Our exponentially increasing costs)

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 10/24/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Neil Harris wrote:
> > Hmm. 2500 hits/sec * 86400 secs/day * $1 CPM = $216,000 / _day_, or
> > $78,000,000+/year. Have you considered that the Wikimedia foundation
> > board might be aware of this, and that its decision not to put up
> > advertising might be a principled decision, rather than motivated by
> > "fear of money"?
>
> We don't have 2500 hits/sec, we have 2500 requests/sec, i.e. including
> images, stylesheets, etc. The difference is roughly a factor of 3. The
> income would thus be closer to $26M.
>
By these figures, we could cover our current operating costs by putting
> ads on the site for two weeks per year. I'm not sure if it's a good idea
> though.

 Alternatively, if just 5% of people *opted in* to advertisements, we'd be
set, and could use the donated money on other things (and wouldn't have to
run the ad begging for donations). Personally I'd rather see targetted ads
at the bottom of the page than requests for donations at the top. Isn't it
possible that 5% of Wikipedians are like me in this respect?
 I really don't see the reason not to try it, other than a fear of money. Or
in the case of Jimbo, the fact that he promised not to do it until the
community agrees.