Why Doesn't Wikipedia.org just use ads to cover costs?

0 votes
asked Aug 8, 2016 in Internet by janet (260 points)
I know that Jimmy Wales is against advertising. But I just don't get why he's so stubborn about putting ads on the site?

I think it's a great site and it could make them lots of money from advertising if they would just use advertising.

Whenever the time comes for him to beg for money I just want to close that begging banner really fast.

I get it that he wants it to stay a not for profit site and you can still do that and still use advertising.

I think he should put ads on and just put a donation button for people to donate if they wish and not beg for the donations over and over.

2 Answers

0 votes
answered Aug 8, 2016 by craig21 (220 points)
I do agree that he should place ads on the site to cover costs.

I've donated to the site in the past when I could as I like it and hope it to be around for a long time.

Although I do know that he'd have to sell direct ad space because a lot of content on there is unsuitable for adsense and many other ad networks.

But I do think he could make some substantial money from ads and I wouldn't mind if they're on there.

Like this site, it has ads and I don't mind them. Websites cost money to run.
0 votes
answered Aug 11, 2016 by blogger (300 points)
Wikipedia is leaving a lot of money on the table by not selling ad space.

He could setup some ad software and sell ads for over $100.00 a day with wikipedia's traffic.

Imagine just 20 ads a day running on that site for $100.00 each per day. That's $2,000.00 per day that they could be making.

Plus they could still accept donations.

I hope wikipedia is around for a long time to come.

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