ad-farms adjacent to linden roads

i live on isabella. a linden road cuts diagonally thru the southeast corner of the sim and thru neighboring sims. in effect, it creates small triangle shaped areas bounded by sim borders and the road itself.

these areas seem to be a magnet for ad farms ... the usual 16 and 32 meter plots.

my question ... i assume that all "first land" was sold as 512 meter plots ... but were these oddly shaped triangular areas originally SOLD as such small pieces? do any of the forum readers remember that far back (hehe)?

if not, i'm curious as to why these particular triangular areas bordering the linden roads became chopped up into 16-32 meter plots and turned in to ad farms.

i find it hard to believe that people seriously thought that the linden roads would turn into highways on which cars or trains would run .. speeding by their "billboards".

I know. They are only asking L$20,000 for most of them. We should jump right on that one.

I remember back when. I actually own one of those odd shaped plots of 512 meters. I'm sure it was offered as "first land" back then just because of the odd shape..........which I did not know back then and purchased it. My land is not triangler shaped.........more like and "L" shape. And it doesn't have a road next to it...........but has three sides of Linden Protectedand and it backs up to the next sim. Basically it's an island with no possiblity of joining plots together to make a larger single plot. At first I was a little disheartened but, hey, it was only 512 lindens to buy (first land, remember ). I've learned to live with it...........can put a decent sized house on it and do most of what I want to do with it. The 117 prim limit is about the only limiting factor. Those are the "disappointments".........the nice part is that with Linden land on three sides there is only one side that I have to concern myself with for someone building something ugly............and the shape of the land is such that that one side would naturally be the back of any house.

But, I can see where that plot could have wound up as a cut up 16 or 32 meter "ad farm" if I had sold. Some of the cut plots could be triangles due to the shape of the plot. Everyone hates ad farms.............well, I don't but I'm not particularly fond of them either. But when someone buys a irregular shaped plot and finds it's hard to sell then I can see where they might divide it up for ad farmers. And you know.........not only have 512 plots been made into ad farms. I've seen in my sim some 1024 and 2048 plots divided up and made into ad farms. I've been in SL for over two years....watched my sim grow and shrink, build into glory and fade into decay.......and repeat again.

Guess, what I'm saying...........don't worry about ad farms. You won't stop them. The same rules (laws) people seem to want to limit them will also limit what you can do on your SL land. Just ignore them............or build at 700 meters.

It's good to remember the Arbor Project group when you come upon a 16 or 32 that you don't know what to do with. Plant trees, not porn.

oh, i'm not worried about ad farms. i just sold 16K on a residential sim with NO ads or businesses. and moved to a more commercial sim. my choice. and i DO have a house at 700 meters. hehe.

but ... i wondered why they seem to collect on those oddly shaped spaces next to linden roads. i mean, it's not like speeding cars are gonna see them.

and true, some are for sale at high prices. extortion for sure. but some are NOT for sale.

go figure.

I'd even bet that most of those Ad Farm Owners haven't logged in since the day they set up the ads.

Most likely they figure "Hey? People will be dumb enough to fall for our crappy ads/products, and come rushing to my website in Russia/China/Carribean Island and spend lots & Lots of American $$$!!"

They pop up along road sides because that ensures they will have at least one side that is unblockable. One side that can't be covered up with a prim wall or plants so it will continue to annoy until it is purchased. (The roadside 16's that aren't for sale, will be soon after their neighbors sell).

(no, i'm not bitter about 16m ad spam. Why do you ask?)

Hmm sounds cheap, I seen a couple for $1million. I wonder if they are trying to affect the average market price somehow?
I make offers on them, I say,"give you $200 for it mate, no way it's worth $20k, it's next to a bunch of adfarms"

Hmm actually I found many don't go to websites at all, many also pretend to be links to RL companies like E-Bay etc, wonder how they feel about their names being used this way?

It's strange that anyone would think that someone with L$1 million in their account would accidentally inspect the land and buy it for that price...even "more money than sense" doesn't apply here.

I wonder about the economic viability of selling ad land. Sure, 16 sq is not a lot and it may well fit into the tier buffer some unscrupulous individual may have. But I cannot imagine that they are being sold fast and often. How does an adcutter stay profitable?

Well, they actually do sell some ads, believe it or not. And the advertisers kind of depend on exactly the kind of cluelessness that would lead a prospective customer to click on such an ad. There's one particular Estate owner, for example, with a reputation for taking the up-front money, then booting the buyer off the land--her ads are all over the grid, and she can only survive with a steady stream of really dumb "buyers." So that's one model.

The other scheme is simple extortion: buy my 4x4m parcel for some exorbitant sum in order to get rid of my full-bright, llTargetOmega-spinning, particle-spewing ad prims, or live with them in your front yard forever. Now, nobody is gonna pay the L$1,000,000 prices--those aren't for profit, they're just to spit in the face of the neighbors, but the L$10,000 ones probably sell sometimes, perpetuating the scam.

Interesting. Thanks, Qui.

With the decrease in resident inflow and the low retention percentage, wouldn't a business model based on the number of clueless newcomers become increasingly unprofitable?

Apparently not sufficiently unprofitable, I guess.

because some people havent been around long enough to unstand thing fully. Common sence doesnt apply to those thinking in this direction.

I live next to what I describe as a burned-out ad farm. Some of the 16m plots still have ads on, and have been unchanged for over a year. Some of the plots have been on sale at ridiculously high prices for all that time. All I can think is the owners have forgotten about SL but their credit cards keep coughing up their payments each month / year.

I used to make a profit from buying up cheap 16m plots and amalgamating them into 64m squares. Quite possibly the next owners carved them up again but I like to think that I was doing a non-bad thing.

The jaggy roadsides are even more interesting to them as two faces of the ad are unblockable - even by other ads.

Although - I've come across one jaggy roadside where the land was cut such that a landholder had a corner of their plot meeting the road in the middle of a turd-pile of 16m plots. He put a collection of prims centred at the extreme corner so that they don't encroach on the ad plots but do hide them from the road. His prims do encroach on the very edge of the Linden road, but Governor Linden does not appear to have ARed him - or the abuse desk don't play favourites if she has
That could be done by any land owner in the sim actually. Just buy a 16m plot in the middle-ish of the roadside rank and use the sim prims to build the screen.

That would be naughty of course, and despite doing a great service for the community at large, nobody should do that.... much.




"Ads" isn't the right word really.
What about that guy with the smiley face boxes. He's fast becoming the face of ad-plot-cutters in your face. His operation seems to me to be pure extortion.

I do the same thing - the vast majority of them don't even bother to respond, and if they do, it's usually negative. This verifies that most really aren't interested in selling the land at a reasonable price - they want to extort the neighboring landowners. I suspect Tod's right about some of them - I bet there are at least a few who haven't even logged in since they set up the ads.

I suspect some add cutters bought up some larger irregularly shaped pieces, sold of the larger usable portion. Then cut up the remaining irregular plot into ad farms, hoping to sell them off at excessivly high prices.

ad farms started out adjacent to the roads,

Back when people actually used them ..

Kind of makes sense for billboards to be there so people could see them as they drove past.

Plus before P2P teleporting it was natural to follow the roads to get to where you were headed, since that way you wouldn't rez inside a building.

The original ad plot people probably didn't have sinister motives ..

It just changed later.

I seem to remember a time when we didn't have P2P teleporting and instead wound up at a 'telehub' and then had to fly/drive/walk to our destinations. If we were lucky, there was a Linden Road near the hub, because even then, the ban lines were irritating.. but at least we could see them to avoid them!

I'm thinking the ad-farms by the roads are kind of a hold over from this time period. I'm so very, very, very glad that we now have P2P teleporting!

When we didn't have P2P teleporting this was a great way to each people with ads. But now its not as effective. In many ways its outdated and useless. But its creating I sours still these days. Why LLABS still allows this game only leads many to believe they can reclaim land alot faster when people giveup on it when they see this type of crap.