| "Forum traffic, unless it's very targeted to a specific niche, does NOT convert well. You won't get a good CPM no matter what." No, I'm talking about informational and news/blog sites that have hundreds or thousands of subtopics. They can get excellent CPMs with Adsense. "That said, you will still do better with ad sales people even if you're selling general, untargeted inventory, especially if you're selling to brand advertisers." No that's not true, unless you have a big enough company to support a lot of salespeople and really high untargeted traffic -- which is not most startups. (That's why I mentioned in my original reply that it partly depends on your traffic.) "you're wrong about how banner buys work" No I'm not wrong. First, I'm not interested in developing an app to sell low CPM banners. Low CPM means you are untargeted--I'm targeted. Second, the vast majorty of people on this site and doing startup do not have boatloads (100s of thousands of pageviews per day) to justify the type of ad buying your are recommending. They don't have the time nor overhead capacity to hire a staff of salespeople. Nor, do they need the headache of managing them. They would be better of with Adsense. "As for Demand Media, you're wrong about how banner buys work." Actually Demand Media does both -- they are using Google Adsense, its lower on the page often integrated into the articles. |