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Glenn Brigaldino's avatar

Apart from any calculation error as Gary suggests, I think this is a very insightful piece, especially younger should be aware about this, as all too many think if they ever reach 1000 clicks they will earn anything worth mentioning. Thanks for pointing this all out.

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Garry Perkins's avatar

I want to make a suggestion, and I hope it does not come across as snarky. You made a "journalist mistake" with regards to finance. The gambling industry revenue is not profit. If you sold ten million dollars worth of widgets, and Widget company paid you an 8% commission, you did not make $10m. You made $800k. You should not say the gaming industry made revenue. The number you want is Net Income. You can take before or after-tax, but that is the number. If you learn a bit more there are better metrics, but they vary by industry and firm (they are the cash flow metrics like EBIT, EBITDA and others that attempt to account for non-cash expenses like depreciation, amortization and the like).

Journalists as a group refuse to learn anything about any subject involving numbers or math. They are even worse with statistics and probability. You are an intelligent man, so I think you can do better than the self-righteous journalist class. In addition, there are many, many more kinds of revenue systems in internet advertising. CPM was the first, but it is far from the only way firms generate revenue.

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