But why serve house ads repeatedly when you can tap into programmatic exchange and monetize at least a portion of those impressions? Programmatic doesn't need to be first look on all impressions.
If I'm on drdobbs.com in one tab and only being served house ads, but in my second tab I have retargeted ads being served to me, that's lost revenue for drdobbs.com
I visit the site and I see the same ad over and over (Interop Convention).
Did you have anyone dedicated managing ad operations for the site? We're you selling any of your users data points to third-party data providers?*
* For the people who hate the idea of a free content site selling your data, this is a good example of what happens.