That sucks man, sorry to hear it.
Hi Jonathan, no chagrin is deserved, I'm sure! To the contrary you'll have many learning outcomes, things that wouldn't occur to those of us who've not yet invested in such a project. Your posts are often very insightful - will you be writing a more in depth review of what you can take away from your post-development experience?
IMO the main reason of failure was the heavy price tag an advertiser had to pay at signup. I agree that it was serving over a million monthly impressions but I would've lowered the price a bit to see the response.
@Ryan Carson
Ooh! A Carsonified ad network.
That would be good for you lot, the way to go.
I'm quite surprised to hear about the demise of Sidebar Ads. I really expected them to come to the forefront with the likes of Fusion and The Deck.
I still think it has potention with the fact that you and the other members of Sidebar are well known in the design/development field. Maybe with a new marketing perspective it could work with a second stab? If not then I'd agree with Andy, it would be great to release the software to the open source community. Any thoughts yes as to it's direction?
Hard to imagine anyone turning down 1,000,000 ad views/month. Good luck on your next ventures!