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Tried before, it does not work.
Those who are the most relevant and trusted from our perspective are mostly small businesses, LBS's, co-operatives, frame makers and bike builders. Their profit margins are so narrow and there's a good tension between wanting to give them more, and them not being able to afford to experiment with banner advertising. End result? Very little income (<£200 per month) for a large number of page impressions (we're still serving millions of pages per month)... and this takes up inventory (ad space on pages) that would otherwise net 10-20x (if we put betting adverts on it).
And if you do go solo like this, and sell your inventory... you also have to pay £200+ on the software that enables it (gives them stats, reporting, control to provide media, etc)... and yup, it means you've made a loss.
This is why we stopped doing adverts when I previously experimented with it. Unless I permit someone else's ad-insertion tech, and they sell the inventory to absolutely anyone and are only motivated by maximising their % of sales... we simply don't get enough £ to make it worth it.
And if we did do that... then yeah, 25-45 year old males is the dominant audience... you can absolutely be sure we'll be sold to betting companies, etc.
Either the donations get larger and more stable such that we can live without Wiggle / CRC, or we eventually sell ourselves to any advertiser who can pay.
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Velocio
What about offering advertising space to liked/trusted bike related companies who are already advertising elsewhere (like you did before)?
I don't think anyone would mind a banner at the top that with a few decent brands advert on rotation?
Fuck betting sites, keep it ethical (if you can)