Do online banners/ads work? seriously...?

[rendo]

MattAAron said:
are these ads REALLY worth it though? For example, VGChartz has an ad below on the page, above, and to the left... and a lot of other places... do these ads give VGChartz that much money to pay the site? Is it worth it? Its not my business asking how much VGChartz makes off ads, but what do sites usually make on them? Anyone here ever created a website and have used ads to generate money?

Well, you can get rough estimates pretty easily.  ioi said recently that VGC gets about 5m hits a month, maybe more now.  Assume a very conservative 0.005% click rate, that's 25,000 clicks a month.  Go with a lowish 10 cents a click and that's about $2.5k a month.  Not sure how the banner ads work, could be different, based on views, but I surmise ioi pulls in at least 2.5-5grand a month before expenses.