Advertising on Wikipedia coming soon
 

maybe coming soon

Wikipedia's founder told a UK paper this week that the user-edited online encyclopedia may carry advertisements at some point. Given current traffic levels, such a move could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Jimmy Wales told Times Online that despite widespread "resistance to the idea" of advertising on Wikipedia, "at some point questions are going to be raised over the amount of money we are turning down."

Wikipedia would be in a prime position to exploit the current boom in online advertising. It expects to record around 2.5 billion page impressions this month and traffic volumes are doubling every four months. According to figures released this month by Nielsen/Netratings, it was the ninth-fastest growing site on the web in 2005.