This advice is reasonable for most types of startup though not particularly those in media where advertising is still a leading and viable form of monetization (principally because most media companies start from and focus on the question: how do we serve advertising efficiently and profitably? It's not a side project.)
Slapping ads on a regular webapp will rarely yield much income without high amounts of traffic, but savvy media companies who can target and deliver high impact advertising aren't crazy to lean on it as their primary form of income (although diversifying into subscriptions and products ASAP is a good idea, nonetheless).
(principally because most media companies start from and focus on the question: how do we serve advertising efficiently and profitably? It's not a side project.)
That right there is why a lot of programmers these days fail tomake any money with advertising. They see it as an add-on, rather than the product itself. Advertising is the product.
The users are the product. Advertising is how you sell them. If you think about the advertising model as selling your users/visitors then the high volume required becomes more obvious. You don't sell an ad slot for $1k. You sell a user for a tenth of a penny.
Slapping ads on a regular webapp will rarely yield much income without high amounts of traffic, but savvy media companies who can target and deliver high impact advertising aren't crazy to lean on it as their primary form of income (although diversifying into subscriptions and products ASAP is a good idea, nonetheless).