Originally Posted by
hellodali
Lots of visits from Office Depot IPs won't increase the CTR
That is very true! The number of page impressions made by a teasing blog post exploiting a thread on FT are absolutely worthless, both for the community and for ad revenue.
Generally, I think trying to finance websites, especially websites with valuable, original content, through advertising is an outdated model, even more so in times of ....... Plus, Ad Muncher, NoScript & Co. I mean, if Flyertalk holds a fundraising campaign to keep their servers running and cover other costs (just as Wikipedia does once a year) and otherwise caters to the community, not to advertisers, I am sure they would earn a lot more money from thankful FTers than those fractions of cents they make from those people who click on advertising banners by mistake or are mad enough to go on the interwebs without an adblocker in the first place. Various successful projects have shown that, the Wikimedia Foundation is just one of them. Then again, having sponsors for certain things, like the FlyerTalk Awards, is absolutely legitimate and I support that. I just draw the line at "manufacturing clicks and traffic" without keeping in mind the long-term impact on the community (which is kind of ironic, seeing as we're in the "manufacturing miles" forum, but oh well ;-))