Monday, October 03, 2005
Pixel Advertising
This is an interesting idea. Basically, you buy screen-space per pixel to place your ad. There are a number of sites doing this... Usually the pixels are sold in $100 blocks for a 10x10 square which is practically useless for an ad. Therefore a 3 or 4 square ad would cost you up to $400 - just enough for a tiny button-type logo!
This advertising is for the lifetime of the site, but I don't think it's a economical way to advertise. Once the novelty has worn off there won't be much traffic for your ad. It can also be a catch-22 situation: as the site builds in popularity, more ads appear, making your ad difficult to stand out. You *may* get a surge in traffic as the site is building - but that's probably about that.
The most popular seems to be The Million Dollar Homepage. I think, but I'm not sure, that it was the first. By all accounts it's a success story -- but only the novelty factor (press releases and news coverage helped). But a search in Google for Pixel Advertising will reveal a lot more clones of this site, that look VERY similar - even down to the menus.
There is a marketing lesson here. Being unique, somewhat outrageous, and the first off the block works.
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5 comments:
Hello Stuart,
Actually what you're witnessing is the start of a new trend. Yes, Alex Tews was the first to express the concept with his milliondollarhomepage.com.
I agree, his site, while financially successful for him will most likely have diminishing returns for the advertisers.
I'm personally advertising on his site and am having favorable response.
Most importantly, I've teamed up with my own ad agency in a joint venture as we believe this entire concept is ripe for exploitation.
Does that mean copycat? Not in the strict sense of the word, although at last count I had located 80 such sites.
JPEAdvertising is creating PixelsAnyone.com - look for the site to be live by Friday. In the meantime our "dummy" html version can be viewed at http://jpeadvertising.com/pixelsanyone/
As search engines demand more content laden pages, advertising which pays for the content has to be delivered much more creatively. I beleive we'll be doing that within the next couple of weeks.
Be sure to visit us and also take time to blog with us once our site goes live.
Delivering highly creative advertising strategies at just the right time,
Shari Thomas
Partner, PixelsAnyone.com
Stuart,
Here's a follow up to the launch of PixelsAnyone.com.
In our first 24 hours of going live, our Alexa ranking is below 5,000 having opened at about 114K.
Sales have been quite brisk at somewhere over 13K.
This site is simply a first generation of ideas to come.
Right now, our network of 1000's of readers are dedicating PixelsAnyone.com as their homepage. That way every time they log in, they see a fresh update.
Imagine your ad being seen repetively for 5 years!
At any rate, know that this is a valid way to present unobtrusive ads in neat little packages that compel you to click.
Shari Thomas
Imagine advertising where you have
no fear of:
Click fraud
Pay per click overcharging
And you get the ability to expose your brand to a a targeted audience for 5 years.
That's real pixel advertising...
I have a sort of twist to the pixel ad craze which I give ull credit to Alex Tew. I have a health condition now which limits my working ability so I decided to create "The Million Quarter Billboard". I will be giving away 50 4GB Apple Nanos. For every entry or block sold you have a chance at winning one. Thanks! Drawing held every 100 blocks or 10,000 pixels sold up to 500,000 pixels.
Shari, and all.
We created www.jambling.net to offer not only pixel advertising (thanks Alex!) but a screensaver of the pixel ad page and an affiiate program to boot. The affiliate prgram is going to become an ad network within the next few weeks, where we`ll be offering banners based on portions of the pixe page itself. I`d love to hear your comments
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