martinibuster - 4:33 pm on Nov 30, 2002 (gmt 0)

They need exposure, they certainly do not care about the number of clicks.

It depends on the contract. I did work for a large news magazine in San Francisco, and sometimes they would guarantee a minimum number of clicks, but in most cases the contract guaranteed 400,000-900,000 impressions for a one to three month period.

These dollar amounts were in the tens of thousands. Sometimes came direct from the companies, very often from ad agencies.

There were also times when online ads were given away as a value-added service to complement print advertising.

To be sure, ad sales were nosediving this summer and fall. Scary.