those numbers are probably off...I mean reddit can be considered a very popular consumer internet product(top 150 on Alexa)...and they just hit 1 billion page views per month, and they are having trouble paying for more than 5 people.
So if $100mm = 100 billion page views/yr. Then by that logic reddit should be making ~12 million a year, which doesn't seem to be that case.
And that would be in addition to the subscriptions people are buying.
Reddit is also terrible at business. Half the ads are 'thank you for not using Adblock'. The founders even left it after their contract ended, so I don't think anyone is really looking at the big picture there.
Still, your point is right. You can't just have a blanket number that works for any site.
Demographics are also important. Reddit has a much more tech savvy crowd than a site like twitter. I think some of the article's estimates could still hold true for reddit, but it wouldn't be a linear scale. To reach 100B pageviews would require breaking into the mainstream, leading to less sophisticated users and better CPM.
So if $100mm = 100 billion page views/yr. Then by that logic reddit should be making ~12 million a year, which doesn't seem to be that case.
And that would be in addition to the subscriptions people are buying.