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  • Not to mention that three of the SE2.0 sites are already generating more than 10k visits/day each. Eventually several of those sites should be quite profitable in their own right. Commented Feb 16, 2011 at 13:07
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    @C. Ross I don't remember the source, but I seem to recall someone saying that there wouldn't be advertising on the SE sites. Commented Feb 16, 2011 at 13:19
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    @George Jeff has said not now, probably not soon, but sometime. What would be the point otherwise? Commented Feb 16, 2011 at 13:23
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    10k * $6 CPM (very high but that's what HuffPo claims). is only $60 a day. That's $1800 per month per site in raw revenue. This isn't adding in job listings, but that's not even enough to support one programmer. Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 0:03
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    @Marcus: You don't need a dedicated programmer for each additional site - the marginal cost of running an additional site is extremely low. If the "big three" pull in enough to run all the servers and pay the staff, any revenue from the SE2.0 sites is straight-up profits. Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 0:44
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    @Marcus, you're conflating impressions (M) with visitors. The average pageviews per visit might be 10 or even 25+. And a unique visitor might return more than once per day, maybe 1.5 times. So the 10,000 visitors per day could easily be 375,000 pageviews per day. At your $6 CPM, that would be $67,500 in monthly advertising revenue per site. (However, the CPMs are likely closer to $1. $6 CPMs are only for homepage traffic. Still, that's $10k/mo/site.) Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 6:17
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    I pay a lot of attention to ads on Stack because they are really relevant to the things I'm interested in. If you're looking to target a developer of X, Y, or Z this is an ideal place to go. Further your conversion rate will be a lot higher. I bed the ads here do pretty well. Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 14:48
  • @Portman that is valid but it could also be 10,000 page views. According to QuantCast, the average page view per user of SO is about 3. That means 10,000 visits = 30k views, or $180 a day. SO is getting 3.3 million PV a month, which is significant, but only about $20k per month in revenue. That's not VC level return. These are not hard numbers, even the $6 per CPM claimed by HuffPo has been questioned by critics. I'm just using it as a recent example. Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 15:55
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    @marcus are you unfamiliar with stackexchange.com/sites ? Look at the visits/day column Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 23:00
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    @Marcus: Forgetting house ads for a moment, You're missing a factor of 3 because we show 3 ads per page to the vast majority of our users. Commented Feb 18, 2011 at 0:11
  • Maybe I'm being blind or silly, but I can't see ads on SO, SF or SU. I suppose they've been removed since 2011. But then that leads me to wonder what SE's main source of income is now. Commented Jun 15, 2014 at 14:48
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    @LeoKing ads are removed or toned down for users with >200 rep, but they're still there. Or perhaps you have an adblocker running. If you visit any of the trilogy sites while not logged in you will see ads. But most of their money comes from Careers I presume. Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 18:26
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    FWIW, I am a capitalist sympathizer and I don't object to seeing ads in exchange for my eyetracks across your page, especially since I get a LOT out of SE. Ads give me the feeling that I am contributing to the system besides asking and answering questions. I like that! With my rep on SO and most of the others I participate in, I don't see many ads, but believe it or not I would like to see more. This is because these ads target my interests. Commented Jan 22, 2015 at 19:29