Comments on: Ars Technica snapped up by Conde Nast

By: financial analysis

financial analysis — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:07:56 +0000

t has been making inroads into digital publishing, including the purchase of Wired (for about $25-million) last year

By: Dan Matan

Dan Matan — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:08:19 +0000

I've been an Ars member since '99. Although the news side of things is very well done, the forums are where it's at (and seemingly where a lot of the current editors have been tapped from).

Over the past year or two, they've done a really good job on getting onto Slashdot and Google News with their well written articles, which presumably added a lot of value/eyeballs.

I'd imagine that the forums, the root of the community, don't create much ad revenue (and they might lose a lot of their for-pay subs and for-pay premium subbers). But it probably could if they decided to go with annoying in-your-face adverts.

Only time will tell, here's to another good 8.5 years.

By: sevin malony

sevin malony — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:58:05 +0000

saw the 24/7 “analysis”. assuming it's right – and i very much doubt those numbers reflect reality – then, folk,s we're back to the bubblicious days. but hey, if ars or any of these other sites can find a buyer, more power to them. nothing wrong with being greedy if some dope is begging to give you their money. but c'mon, we've been here before. or has everyone in the world forgotten the “battle for eyeballs” back a few years ago.

anyway, pass the bong and inhale deeply. and the band played on

By: Eric Berlin

Eric Berlin — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:58:54 +0000

Agree with Lucas — that was my first thought: $36 CPM seems awfully high. Perhaps they get it for a limited amount of inventory but can't imagine it's across -the-board.

Also agree with Mathew that Ars could be a good fit for Conde — they're putting together a pretty interesting digital portfolio.

By: mathewi

mathewi — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:41:03 +0000

That's a fair point, Lucas. Those are pretty high CPMs for a site like
Ars, and assuming they get that for every page view is probably
overstating things. That said, however, I looked at TechCrunch and saw
that Ars has about four times as many page views, and I had seen an
estimate somewhere that TC was making about $600,000 a month, so I
thought I was in the right ballpark revenue-wise.