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Comment by dumbfounder | Hacker News Reader

I don't think reputable ad networks would advertise on pirate sites. The disreputable ones don't get you $2 cpms. Period. I think he is off by at least an order of magnitude, maybe more.

Source: I run twicsy.com, which major networks avoid because of nsfw content, and only get about 12 cent RPM (revenue per page per 1000).

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They absolutely do, they just don't realize. There are a lot of schemes for "laundering" where the ad ran. Aside from popunder/redirect shenanigans that were covered in the press recently, they can iframe a "legit" site (that they control or partner with) which then runs the ad. They may or may not bother to actually arrange the ad to be visible.

Yeah it can happen, no doubt, but on a super high traffic site like the main video pirate site they are talking about I think they would stick out like a sore thumb if they were making millions. Or maybe I'm wrong.

You're wrong :-(

So you think one of the highest trafficked sites out there can run this fraud scheme and continue to make money out in the open? I think that sort of stuff works spread across hundreds of sites, but not on singular high traffic sites like the one mentioned in the article.

FYI for both of you. The site closed their stats after 2015 and moved to google analytics.

Being a shady website is rarely an obstacle to using the same thing as everyone else.

They can run the laundering scheme with a rotation of however many decoy sites as they like. Making one site look like hundreds is not hard.

One of our network's primary goals is to maintain a sizable collection of exclusive and AOR offers, including adult. Doing so successfully for 10 years, we're considered "top-tier" by our publishers and advertiser and are able to offer very competitive payouts. In order to accomplish this, we've filtered and pruned away publishers of the sort.

EDIT: Just realized OP is taking about incent stuff for hosting sites. We, and most "reputable" ad networks 100% disallow incent traffic and have a zero-tolerance policy.

Author here. The estimates could go either way. Kindly note that the stats are incomplete, notably the welcome page is missing.

Some ads are cheaper, some countries are cheaper. Put 3 ads per page from 3 different networks to counter balance. Then force the page to refresh once or twice. There are many ways to optimize revenues when one really care about revenues.

I hate to break it up to you but your site is picture hosting, it's low engagement and low value. People will not try the wrong "download" button 3 times until they find the right one, only to do the same thing again next week for the new episode of games of thrones.

Yes, agreed my site is "low value". Despite the engagement though, an obviously pirate site is also low value by nature of the networks that are willing to work with it. Quote me some actual networks they use and cite the cpm's they typically pay and I will concede. Right now we are both speculating.

As someone who ran a fairly large, mostly reputable website (reddit), I agree that you are off by an order or magnitude or more. There is no way they get close to $1 CPM. They'd be lucky to get 10 cents, probably closer to 1 or 2 cents.

They most likely barely break even after paying themselves a modest salary.

Your CPM estimations are in line with my experience, and I also think the profit calculations are off.

That said, thinking about it raised an interesting question: are fake download button ads presented to a risk-taking demographic a special case?

Even spending up to five to ten dollars per compromised machine, I could easily turn a hefty profit.

What markets have a CPM of 1cts? I have never seen that. I'd be shocked under 10cts.

Most markets don't do CPM anymore they pay per click, so you end up with an effective CPM below 10 cents if you have poor click through rates and/or low payouts per click.

CPC is great. There are advertisers specialized in serving ads looking like download buttons, they will end up on the download pages and greatly confuse users. Fantastic click through rates guaranteed.

I don't think that your experience of running a popular site (reddit) is comparable to running a download site.

I forgot where I heard this from but I thought the reason reddit didn't monetize well was because the users were either using adblock or were too tech savvy to click on ads?

I have been using reddit for probably a decade now but don't remember ever clicking an ad. OTOH I typically misclick on a few links before I get my download when visiting pirate sites even with adblock on.

I run a network of a handful of sites that amass roughly 1MM hits per day. Over the last 14 days, my Ø CPM for pops is $2.74 across all countries, with the top CPMs being:

   Country	CPM
   US	  $11.175
   Nigeria	$5.519
   Italy	$4.104
   Iran   $3.636
   Japan	$3.596
   Grenada	$3.591
   Australia	$3.217
   Canada	$3.198
   Egypt	$2.459
   Panama	$2.384
   Germany	$2.244
   France	$2.199
   Israel	$2.146
   UK	  $2.109
   South Africa	$2.035
   Denmark	$1.733
   Finland	$1.732
   Sweden	$1.617
   Portugal	$1.579
   New Zealand	$1.545
   UAE	 $1.528
   Korea	$1.480
   Switzerland	$1.476
   Norway	$1.354
   Latvia	$1.233

EDIT: formatting

The last 14 days are also the best CPMs for the entire year. In the middle of February, you're looking at closer to a third of this.

What network do you use? Are you popping every page? What is the nature of your content?

The nature is very similar to yours, except I use another social network as a content provider. I use a combination of the top ad networks and optimize placements based on payouts for a particular country. I do try to pop every page.

Could be a hit job/piece created by the MPAA to change sentiment on piracy or not ;)

What they need to do is just keep making great content and I’ll keep paying to see it in The theater. Aren’t their revenues climbing each year?

Try reading the story about Methbot.

Definitely interesting stuff, but it is a different scheme that involves hundreds or thousands of sites. We are talking about a single insanely high volume site and that makes a big difference.

Have been working on something similar, do you mind explaining how you chose ad networks? and any other monetization hot tips?

It's all about working with the premium ad networks. They won't touch me so I don't make squat.

unrelated. Can you tell the bandwidth of your site? (or its approximate magnitude)

It's not tremendously high because I don't host the images. It is very roughly 500gb per day. (I get a TON of bot traffic)

Wow, thats not a bandwidth to host from aws! thanx!

Also, the "50% run adblocker" is probably also way too low. I really hope it's closer to 90%.

Author here.

The readers from HN are around 60% last I checked and it's pretty much the most knowledgeable large audience you will come across.

This is really the saddest news I read today.

But also and audience that understands the need of ads, and therefore choose to not block ads

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