Ask HN: Do purely ad-based web sites still make sense?

It looks like even with 1M monthly page views, it would be tough to generate $10k. It seems like it'd be pretty tough to market a website to that level.

I have a service I was building just for myself to fix some problems with online movie, tv, book, etc reviews -- sort of like FakeSpot -- but after doing the math, I'm wondering how much energy I should put into marketing it. The upside seems pretty low, and the costs can be quite high...

Does anyone have any success stories with an ad-based website?