I just checked Sitepoint, and there are currently 17 sites that sell, or have been sold for more than $50.000. A salesprice less than that probably indicates you can't live off it. Of those 17 sites:

- two are getting revenue from affiliate marketing

- one is advertising porn

- one has advertising income of $500 monthly

- one has ad revenues of $3000 monthly.

The rest sell actual products that they charge for.

I still don't think advertising is a model that works well for most companies.

I did actually mean look at it periodically for a while and check out some of the sites that come up. You can't really take a single snapshot for a single day and draw any conclusion from it.

That's like saying there haven't been any IPO's today, so IPO's aren't possible.

Also it's probably slightly rarer to see profitable ad-supported websites actually come up for sale, since often they take nothing to run, so people hang onto them.

I agree with your general perspective; but also, I see obvious benefits to charging for one's product directly from the user; revenue increases as you grow, no conflicting interests or prioritisations between advertisers and users.

What are the advantages to the advertising model from a business perspective? I see obvious downsides; ad placement is a careful balancing between frustrating/confusing your users and making money off of them. Costs aren't related to the useage of your product, etc.