IHUB earns plenty of money from "hits" the freebies provide.
Most of iHub's revenues come from subscriptions. Advertising is a small fraction of the revenue. You apparently haven't tried to get advertising buys in this climate. Any site relying solely on ad income is really struggling.
And it's not written in stone, by a long shot, that both sites will merge. That's one of two choices we have, but that decision won't be made for at least a year and likely longer.