Removed all ads, and what Hunch means

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).