Thinking about TBP Advertising

Submitted by: aka.attrition

Thinking about TBP Advertising

To my counting the homepage has more or less 35 adverts. Checking 3 random articles I count more or less 35 adverts on each one, looks like a template page layout. If you visit the site only once per day and read 5 articles the site will try to present 210 adverts to you. None of which you see because you’re using an ad-blocker. Cool.

If the site has 10,000 visitors per day then that’s 2,100,000 adverts that are served every day but never seen.  Total ad revenue for TBP per day with 10,000 visitors using ad-blockers = zero.

Adverts are usually paid for only when they are clicked on and generate actual visitor traffic to the advertiser or, more rarely, by impressions. In the case of impressions only the rate is somewhere around $1 per thousand impressions but being paid for an impression only is much less often the case. Normally an advertiser wants to get actual traffic to their website because that’s the surest way for the advertiser to know their advert got seen. Clicked on adverts obviously generate more revenue, perhaps as much as $0.10 per click.

Using an impressions only model:

2,100,000 impressions at $1 / 1000 impressions = $2100 per day.

Using a click thru only model:

Assuming only a tiny fraction of adverts are clicked:

0.01% of 2,100,000 = 210

210 * $0.10 per click = $21 per day

Assume total ad-revenue is some combination of these two models, take half, and a rough calculation of what TBP might be missing out on is $1000 … per day … and all because we all use ad-blockers. That must be a real downer for any website owner.

Even if you assume I’m out by a factor of 10 then we’re still talking about $100 per day or $3000 per month (working on a 30 day month).

Even if we assume I’m out by a factor of 100 then we’re still talking about $10 per day or $300 per month or $3,600 per annum which is 6.5% of the annual beg-a-thon. And, of course, this is gross, not profit. The point is that real money is being lost because of the use of ad-blockers. Yes, I’m also using one.

Keep in mind that admin takes a big risk with this site. Cancel culture cockroaches are all around like … well, like cockroaches. Plus it takes time and money to run a site like this and the more popular it becomes the more costs involved in server and bandwidth infrastructure.

Now that admin has made it really easy to make a contribution using Stripe (without needing an account or providing any more info than an email address and card details) we really have few excuses left to just throwing a few dollars towards this site. If times are too tough (which they are for most of us) then here are a few suggestions:

• Switch off the ad-blocker, load a page, and click on some adverts every now and then. Cost to you: nothing.
• Buy something from one of the adverts; we all need more ammo and a pillow to muffle the shot. Cost to you: depends on how many shots you need; improve your aim.
• Buy some TBP merchandise. Can’t find the slogan you like? Design one and suggest it to admin and then buy it. Cost to you: not much extra because you’re going to buy a t-shirt or sweatshirt or mug somewhere sometime anyway.

Even Biden says you know, the thing, c’mon man!

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