The truth behind ad-blocking and more – A PA Report

We’ve been working with the folks at Penny Arcade for a shade over a decade at this point, and like you we’ve been enjoying the work of Ben Kuchera and the PA Report.  Recently they took the words right out of our mouth, pulled back the curtain, and explained how the world of advertising, staffing, and a possible new methodology for the video game editorial world.  Entitled “Ad-blockers, the games press, and why sexy cosplay galleries lead to better reporting”, the article spends time explaining how CPM works, how ad blocking can impact it, and the eventual result on our ability to employ full-time writing staff.  This speaks directly to us at Gaming Trend as we are an all-volunteer army.  While the site has recently reached a tenuous profitability status, we too struggle under the same math.   Check out this snippet:

Niero Gonzalez, the founder of Destructoid, ran a test and found that around half of the site’s readers were blocking ads on the site, and that’s a common occurrence when it comes to gaming and technology sites. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re probably a male between the ages of 15 to 40, and you’re engaged with your technology enough to know how to block ads, and you find it increases your enjoyment of browsing the Internet and viewing content. Which means that about half of you are blocking the ads on this site.

I’m still glad you’re here, but hear me out.

So now it turns out I need around 1,500 readers to get that $5 for my hypothetical site. Say I want to pay myself $500 for the month. It’s not a ton of money. I need 150,000 page views. That jumped right up there, didn’t it? Now look at sites that employ a number of highly skilled, professional writers that are full time and making a livable wage. You’re suddenly looking at millions and millions of page views required to keep everything afloat, much less expand. Tens of millions of page views. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of unique readers.

This quote is just a snippet of the whole thing which goes on to cover things like Top 10 lists, cosplay, the rumormill, and even a novel new approach that we are looking at potentially tackling ourselves – crowdsourcing.  The article isn’t just for those of us on this side of the fence, but should be practically required reading for any denizen of the Internet today.   Take a moment and give it a look – it might change the way you read your favorite sites…

Source: PA Report

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