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by jasonlotito 5962 days ago
Advertising on SO. Sure, you can get highly targeted advertising that could help solve peoples problems. Converting Oracle to MySQL could have Oracle promoting tools to do just that on that very page. However, all those impressions are essentially people coming to the site, looking for an answer, and leaving. If the answers aren't there, they go back to Google and look for another answer.

Advertising on something like SO is almost like advertising your latest application on the Pirate Bay. I just don't see the value.

1 comments

I'd be quite keen to advertise my to-be-launched-soon coder community site (that's not competing with SO) on SO, but they have no self serve system and I'm not paying the $20+ CPM they'd probably quote if I contacted them direct.. :-)
Do that and let me know what kind of return you make from advertising on SO. Until then, everyone is "keen" until they have to open up their wallet.
Appreciate the cynicism, but at the right price I (and doubtless many others) would do it for sure. An advertiser's idea of the "right price", though, is bound to differ from theirs ;-) Given that developers have a low CTR.. the CPM would have to be "very low."