The New Price Of A Web Ad: Free?

Here’s how hard it’s gotten to make money selling advertising on websites: Some industry experts think there may be more profit in giving them away for free.

That’s what a couple veterans of the online ad space tell Reuters. A story about Microsoft’s $6.2 billion write-down of aQuantive, the ad network it purchased five years ago, notes that the average rate charged for the sort of ads that aQuantive sells has fallen by about 15% in the last two years and more than 50% since 1998.

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