Petit Bourgeois

6 weeks ago, I started experimenting with ads on this site. In this period, Google Analytics tells me it received 295 visits, 392 page views, plus 220 views through the RSS feeds, for a whopping total of about 600 views!

Google AdSense tells me there were 387 page impressions with AdSense for content (one click, page CTR of 0.26%), and 362 ad impressions with AdSense for feeds (zero clicks), which earned me a total of €0.34. They calculate my CPM (cost per thousand impressions) at €0.88, which means my site sucks as an advertising space, although I'm not sure how significant the calculations are with such low numbers.

I wasn't going to get rich this way: time for me to remove all the ads--thanks for bearing with me through this experiment!

One of my bigger neighbors, Hunch, is making an interesting foray into what it means to be an advertising property: I imagine they're hard at work developing concepts, technologies and partnerships to monetize all the information I'm giving them about who I am and what I think.

However, what's amazing is that existing AdSense technologies, simply preying on the pages' content, can already serve me ads that are incredibly targeted. They can be served at a time when I'm quite receptive (at the end of a quiz).

The proof-of-concept basis for Hunch.com is incredibly simple, and the power of its idea lies in how existing commodity technologies (simple web programming, content-aware advertising) and infrastructures (Google's vast pool of advertisers) are arranged, and start making sense when they scale (enough people, content and ads to make sense on average).