Thread:Sannse/@comment-24567264-20140109175016/@comment-8-20140110174440

I think you are squishing two different things together. Meiko's ban isn't about how advertising works... it's about our forking policy (among other things) But anyway, let's leave Meiko out of the equation, and I'll try to answer the rest... The ads business is a complicated one, and one that changes a lot over time. I am no expert in it, although I sit a few desks away from people who are :) In general, payment for ads is either "an amount for each person viewing the ad" (or rather, viewing the page that contains the ad), "an amount for each person clicking the ad", or "an amount for showing the ad on particular pages for a specific time". Of course, those amounts per view/click/page are tiny, but the hope is that enough people will come to a site to make that worthwhile. So the idea of Wikia is for it to be a symbiosis.  We try to give wikis the environment they need to grow into active communities with interesting content... that encourages more people to visit and read... those readers see ads as they look around... the ad company pays Wikia for showing those ads.... and Wikia becomes a successful business that can continue to grow and host those wikis.

Without this system, we wouldn't be able to keep Wikia free, we'd have to do something like charging fees for hosting. It would sorta be like a shop not being able to charge for the things it sells... they would have to figure out another way to stay in business, maybe by putting ads all around the shop ;)

You mentioned the harm to Wikia if a wiki is deleted. The harm isn't directly in losing ad space, it's in losing the potential for the wiki to stay active and available for future contributors and readers. We know from experience that wikis often do carry on being active or return to being active after a fork. And we definitely don't want to discard part of Wikia that those remaining and future users might enjoy.

I hope that helps, let me know if I missed anything or wasn't clear :)