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Comment by user5994461 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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