"Thousands" is less than "tens of thousands" or any larger number, which to me says <=$9,999. And the millions applies to the whole operation, not the ads.
I was commenting on the perceived strangeness of a sub-10K monthly advertising budget given the much larger amounts of money in play from legitimate interests, nothing further.
Where does it say "a few thousand"? Just says "thousands" and notes that the total operating budget was more than 1M per month