[Sven7]

Ad supported?

I really don't understand why advertising supports so much superficial BS when at the same time their customers want better targeting.

The fact that so much worthless stuff gets supported to me implies there is huge scope for those wasted ad dollars to be redirected to more utilitarian ends.

[mkr-hn]

Advertising is usually impression-based, so there's a powerful incentive to drip feed meaningless but easy to share and consume tidbits. Investing some of the wealth it produces into less profitable but more culturally valuable content requires a conscious decision most producers don't make.

I think of Cracked when I think of a site that breaks the trend. It's usually informative and entertaining at the same time.

[czr80]

The "markets" are too niche - ad supported works for mass market sites, not for specialist journals read by a few tens of people.

[Sven7]

Elsevier $2.7 billion revenue comes from tens of people?

Any company that runs an R&D dept would be happy to advertise.

[czr80]

Actually, probably some journals could survive from advertising. But I'm a bit biased by thinking of mathematics journals, and trust me, you can't make that much advertising to mathematicians.