Hacker News Reader

There are plenty of alternatives to Adsense but none of them are comparable.

Which is why I stated that they should be run secondary to AdSense. At least they'd be ready to go when Google decided to shut Techdirt down.

Something is better than nothing.

Have you done this? I've run remnant alternatives and quite honestly the RPMs almost make it pointless.

I'm talking $0.01 - $0.05 CPM when Adsense was averaging ~ $3

You're saying you only made 5 cents after generating a thousand clicks on an ad?

In this situation, CPM is likely based on impressions, not clicks.

Most of the also-run ad networks do that, yes.