20 Million Views for $5K | Hacker News Reader

20 Million Views for $5K

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42 pointsryandvm35 comments

Edit: Apparently it was 5 thousand, not 10.

Gizmodo, and the entire Gawker network, is geared towards one thing, that being to generate page hits. Page hits equal ad imprint revenue.

After curiously inspecting the article, I looked at their legal page. They specifically spell out that any and all legal communications will be disclosed (even DMCA take down notices).

From what I can see, Gawker wants to stir the pot as hard as possible to generate the maximum views. Content is relevant only so far as it achieves that goal. Apple contributes to this goal by its maximum use of secrecy.

Gizmodo has also been generating lots of attention (albeit unwanted) for Apple.

So, Gawker and Apple need each other in a strange antagonistic way? How about Steve Jobs as The Dark Knight and Ryan Tate as The Joker? It sorta fits. Steve does seem to like dressing in black.

Actually they shifted their focus away from sheer page views to unique visitors: http://www.businessinsider.com/gawker-switches-to-unique-num...

Technically it cost $5,000 and at least one man's reputation, and possibly his job.

They make at-least $8 CPM for one ad spot.

http://advertising.gawker.com/rates/

Also, I remember reading not too long ago that their "authors" gets paid by page views.

Fantastic ROI. I remember reading about that pay model too.

Ethics and all aside, this was a good deal for Gizmodo (I thought it was $5K though). More (evily?) genius was demanding a letter from Apple before returning the prototype to ensure another exclusive.

Of course it Apple unleashes its legal department on them it may turn into a negative balance really quickly....

Yes, by discounting any and all consideration of blowback, legal risk and setting up an expectation amongst sources of getting paid, it was a net positive.

you are counting only a single day of page views, chances are that one article will bring in a ton more traffic over the coming days/weeks/months.

i.e. even now gizmodo ranks in #1 position for iphone V4

Denton paid $5,000 and you need to subtract the hits they would get anyway, but it looks like they made out great.

How many page hits to pay for the lawyers to defend disclosure of trade secrets lawsuits? What about trafficking in stolen goods lawsuits?

They basically sold their soul for such little gain.

I'm not a lawyer, but it sounds like they really didn't do anything wrong. Check out this write up which brings up a number of good points. http://www.edibleapple.com/gizmodo-paid-10000-for-lost-iphon...

Short-term profit (page views), long-term possible net loss (denied access to WWDC, Apple events)

Gizmodo had a problem with CES and Tv-b-Gone

minus potential legal fees?

now that apple legal is involved...

I really hope Apple never invites them to any press announcement again, sends them review devices and boycott them as much as possible. Usually I disagree with Apple's policy a lot (who doesn't?), but what Gizmodo has done was really cheap and deceitful. No company deserves that kinda treatment.

Other companies get the same treatment all the time, it's only such a big deal because Steve Jobs runs that campus like they are shielding nuclear secrets.

they crossed the line with naming the employee.

Why? Apple already knew who he was. If anything this secures his job because they can't fire him and rely on his NDA to keep him quiet.

I agree. Whilst Apple knows who he is, and the guy will be under pressure anyway, I think its very unfair to go to the lengths they have (even saying on the latest post that it was the guys birthday when he lost it). I hope the pressure doesn't get to him too much. We all make mistakes

Edit: Apparently it was five thousand, not ten.

Just curious--in situations like this would there ever be a situation where they run out of ad inventory to serve?

On a somewhat unrelated note, why do people use Sitemeter over Google Analytics (honest question)?

well GA is delayed by a day or so in reporting. could be one reason.

not by a day anymore, more like 2/3 hours tops

The default is a day, but if you go up and change your date range you can get it for current day as well.

We use Omniture and Sitemeter. I suspect many big sites use at least two stats tools also. Sitemeter is real-time, and makes it easy to see where you are getting linked from.

Good to know, thanks.

Gawker uses it so that the stats are public. I don't think you can do that with Google Analytics. They have also been using Sitemeter since well before GA was around.

Tuesday is young, they will still be above baseline.

CPM = $0.50

Which is why content sites can't survive on anything but rich media ads right now.

That's how much they paid for the iphone, not how much income they made. As someone pointed out elsewhere in the thread they sell ads for $8 CPM so they probably made around $160,000 from it.

My point was really that if a giant grand slam still costs $.50/cpm, it's awfully hard to sustainably produce content with something like AdSense.

And yeah, they sell ads for $8/cpm, but by about 1 million pageviews on that article they were showing either no ads or house ads, meaning they weren't even making money at that point.

Well, someone changed the title from $10k to $5k, so my math is wrong now. CPM = $0.25

Oh, it will cost a lot more once they factor in the legal fees. Unless they want to become the next ThinkSecret...

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