Ad Farms

I bought land near a Linden road in a new sim on the mainland about a month ago. The plots next to the road have been subdivided into 32/16m plots that are being advertised as ad farm or for ads next to the roadside. The prices range anywhere from 999-4000L depending on the size. Some plots are larger than 32m, hence the higher price. I've been watching the plots sell and resell for weeks now, and always at a higher price.

I was under the impression that ad farms are not acceptable in SL and so is selling land at hugely inflated prices, but when does the price and the amount of ads cross the line and become an AR offense?

The way the ads are now, it's not a problem, but hardly any of the 16/32m plots are selling. I suspect in the future, the ads will not only multiply, but increase in size becoming a glutted eyesore.

If there's an ad on a for-sale parcel, it should be AR'd. There apparently is some minimum cost per sq.m. that makes the AR actually result in removal of the ad, but nobody has revealed that minimum, so anything should be considered fair game as long as the parcel is for sale *and* has an ad on it.

There is currently no ban on putting land for sale at any arbitrarily high price. There are 16s in my current home sim that are priced for over L$500/sq.m., some with banlines, some obviously terraformed to maximally deform neighboring parcels. ARs involving these parcels are not acted upon at present; they are not part of the current adfarm ban.

(BTW, microparcels changing owners and prices doesn't mean that anybody actually bought them.)

You should hear all the jack asses who do this sit at Jack Linden's office hours talking about what a legitimate business they run.

Music to LL's ears.

Community be damned if it means money for LL. They should have done something about it when "Impeach Bush" guy was rampant, but nooooooooo.

Does it really? I mean, you can get several thousand ad parcels for the price of a single sim. That doesn't seem like much of a cut for LL.

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Re, "legitimate business": Legitimate businesses don't need constant propaganda campaigns to remind us that our better instincts are "wrong."

But I must admit, watching them try is pretty entertaining.


'til then, I call it what it is: a spam campaign.

I think the landcutters and adfarmers are the same people, or at least sleeping together, as how else would someone running adfarms know about all the roadside 16m plots for sale within minutes and there's something screwy about the way some plots continue to cycle between groups.

I looked at the profile of the guy who owns all the micro plots and all he does is buy up split land and then resells it. He owns the group that the land is listed for sale under, and he personally handles the buying of the plots. There are no other interests listed in his profile other than selling ad farm plots. He's a sleeze.

Many groups don't show in profiles, and they would of course split it to an alt group so it looks like it's not one person it could even be a person using adfarms to finace a large estate, hence LL reluctance to kick their butts from SL. With alt accounts and groups so easy to mke in unlimited supply who knows who is who anyway?

Yes, well, if it's the one I'm guessing, his profile also shows that he's No Payment Info On File--and I hardly think he's renting all that tier from the Ninjas--so that means a Premium alt, and she may have other interests in those microparcels.

In some cases, anyway.


I see it more as two sides of the same market: land cutters provide the supply, ad farmers provide the demand.

It's only natural to work your connections in that kind of market.

I was researching the policy on ad farms, and decided to ask Linden concierge. This is the reply I got
"submit an abuse report and a member of the Governance team will deem whether they are abuse or not"

So .. I am going to submit a report and see what happens