Any global statistics on how the number of pageviews correlate to the earnings from ads shown? Will it make any sense to display advertisements for 200k pageviews / month, or will it bring just cents / a few dollars per month (in which a case it’s not worth the effort)?
Also, @HAWK, since you know lots about communities, how much showing ads will affect user experience in an online community? Is it important to make it ads-free for logged-in users? And any other advice is very appreciated.
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Interesting question.
The community manager side of me says that it would be a case-by-case thing. In some communities I’d expect to see ads and therefore wouldn’t be bothered, in others perhaps not. (I don’t use an ad blocker.)
I’d also be skeptical of the kinds of ads and how they were introduced. When we introduced them on the forums when I was at SitePoint we managed the communication ok but the ads weren’t great and there was a backlash. They weren’t relevant in the context of the community.
I also know of organisations that are seeing a very serious drop in ad revenue and are having to find other ways to generate income. That implies that something isn’t working – I don’t know how much of that is people choosing not to visit because of the UX or whether it can be attributed to ad blockers.