bill board ads

yea alot of people complain about them why not just im all the people who advertise on them and tell them taht you and your freinds do not buy any proctu that is advertised on a bill board and to not buy anything from somebody who uses them and have all your freinds do that
they get enough of those message and see there sales start to drop they might start to thik about other advertising?

Been there, done that, failed miserably.

Any other suggestions?

First, it would mean I'd actually have to stop and look at them. Second, my poor tired fingers can only take so much typing and I can't imagine anyone having that much time.

make a form letter and C&P most of the body of it them all you have to do is add a polite hi and a nice sign off saves typing

get more peopel involved and get better orinised use note cards so you know they ge the message

Because a lot of these "advertisers" are alts who never look at IMs. Log in, open IMs, close all, put up more ads, return to Main Account.

Quite frankly, I DO boycott all those that use ads on ad-farms or when placed as to detract from the overall feel of SL. However, a LOT of those "ads" are nothing of the sort, and are simply there to extort Residents into "buying the view" so they don't have to look at the ugly things. 16m plots with spining particle-spewing ads that are set to sale for 45,000L$ are a prime example. My opiinion is that people who do such blantent acts should be banned and their land siezed by LL.

There are those that put up tasteful ads. These I may, or may not go to, depending on my whim, but, unfortunately, the idiots are more prevailant so the "good ads" are lost in the flood of stupidity.

LL's stance on allowing any build, and not having any type of "zoning" at all, tends to perpetuate the bad type of ads, as well as haivng those "junkyards" from parcels where the owners no longer log in, but have left Build on without auto-return set.

~Jessy

that why you go to that place that is advertising and tell them not who owns the bill board and make sure you say your count may go up will people are leaving you messages but you notice your sales have not

Go ahead and start spamming IMs on the owners of the ugly billboards. Be sure to report back to us in a month or so with your results, including how many times you've been cursed at, muted, orbited, or banned in reply.

These ads are mostly on mainland. The islands are so much better. However, you can't walk very far across islands. I'd like to see them coagulate into continents yet still have covenants.

I once tried to compile a list of every business using an ugly billboard with the idea of posting them on a web site for a boycott, but quickly gave up as this was not very interesting. All I can do is boycott the ones I know about. Their content is never as good as those that don't advertise.

I close my blinds and dont ever wonder outside. Get down on my knees and pray that one day they will just go away. My home is on mainland and it was a beautiful little plot when I first bought it. /me shudders when she thinks about it now.

The billboards don't make money from advertising, hell, most of them just put advertising on as an excuse to do it; "What am I doing wrong? I'm just running a nice, honest, advertising business".

Fact is they make their money from force people to buy the land the advertising is on. Most of the horrible things are on 16 sq metre plots, whose typical value is what...L$100 or something? But they put them for sale for L$20,000 or more. Essentially "forcing" neighbours who have their view ruined to shell up the cash to remove the advertising.

If you have to be on mainland, then build in the sky, at least then all you have to do to clear your view is move down or up a few metres.

let me guess you run an ad bussiness

i'm talk everbody doing it letting ad people know that bill bourds are costing there bussiness moeny not helping it one or two people doing it nope it would not have much of an inpact, but a couple hundered now your have somebodys attetion

i don't know maybe an off sight web page to monitor it all some ideas would be good here everybody complains about the ads and yet when you try and think of a plan there is not much input outside of well i tried to do that well ok but did every body try it at the same time and one to tow message to somebody a week letting them know they are being boy cotted is not harrasment. i mean if i run a bussiness and would get 20 messages from diffent people i would start to wonder becouse i know that ussually, the letters you get like that are the tip of the ice buerge and 1 letter represents 3-4 other people. i'm not saying the people who place bill boards are that mathimatically inclined. but i'm sure they all have a wait a minute point. the point hwwere they go wait a minute this is costing me bussiness even if you do claim to be the biggest mall in SL or have the most shops

This is a really difficult problem. Ultimately it will be solved, I think, by the ability to selectively control which content is viewable from a parcel, which will arise as a side-effect of having age-restricted and non-restricted parcels in very close proximity on the Mainland.

In the meantime, it just might actually help to notify advertisers (*not* the adfarm owners) that using the billboard ad service is losing them business. But I've tried that a bit, and they're very defensive, and you can kinda see why. For one thing, the fact that I noticed the ad in the first place confirms their judgment in putting the ad up: people notice. And second, it *was* a judgment they made, a business decision, so they have some affect tied-up in that decision. It won't be easy to convince them they were wrong.

And billboards are the only hope for some of the advertisers, because they really depend on a steady supply of the clueless to get any business at all. For example, there's a particularly disreputable owner of a small chain of tropical islands with the curious property of being overpriced for initial purchase, overpriced for monthly "tier," and subject to frequent unjustified and uncompensated reclaiming by the owner. On the face of it, that estate should be empty, but the spinning ads are selectively effective at luring the really gullible to the scam.

Unfortunately, even if your IMs were received, that would just give comnfort to the ad placer that:

1. The advert has been seen; and
2. Someone is upset about it and is a potential for extortion

Jessy - I agree with your views on the extortion adverts, and I have been thinking about putting in a JIRA request on this, something along the lines of capping the sell price per sq m of any land that is under say, 64 sq m, to 5 L per sq m. But I am not sure exactly how to phrase it, or whether it would be remotely acceptable - it is a sort of "control" mechanism, and you really do not want too many of those in SL cos it is difficult to know where the line should be drawn.

Mjolnir you still seem to be misunderstanding; the advertising doesn't make any money, or if it does it's negligible compared to the amount of money the ad "businesses" make by forcing people to buy their advertising plots to clear up their view.

The best solution I think is just to let users hide content. If we can't see the advertising then we can't be annoyed by it (unless they use chat-spam which is Abuse Reportable), and the problem goes away, because ad-farming will no longer be profitable.

The most popular JIRA proposal for hiding visibility can be found here:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1017

Please log-in with your Second Life account details and vote for the issue!

oh hye side note question kinda related

land that LL has reclaimed that still has the items on them and they are annoying is htere anything you can do about that

Oh, yeah, just submit a support ticket. It may take them a few days to get 'round to clearing the parcel, but they're pretty good about it, and will set the parcel no-build/auto-return so new crap doesn't accumulate.

Survey says... X. No, sorry, I build houses and furniture. I've simply been in SL long enough to know what the true motives of most "ad businesses" are, and that sending the owners a "couple hundred" IMs is liable to annoy them to the point of retaliation.

Be glad you weren't here 18 months or so ago, when the "Impeach Bush" billboard guy was heavily active on the grid.

Yes, I've concidered this, but rejected the idea. Putting a cap on L$/sqm would solve the extortion issue in the short term (maybe), but is more a deterant to the honest buisness person.

This is one of the aspects that I think LL should help back us in the "self goverment" they keep spouting about. Have LL sponser a Group. Invite in random people across the grid, mixing in the respective account-ages. That is, a few of the older memebers from 2003/2004 as well as some from the mid to late 2007 and everywhere inbetween. Eventually, enough will accept the invitations to have a good selection of Resident input (I estimate 30-50 to be in the group). The Group members will be shown to the public, so anyone can IM them. Members look at lands that are summited and summit a Group Proposal to be voted on. Lands that get a unanoumous vote for the need for LL interaction, get that interaction from the Linden Sponser in the group. Any lands that gain a majority vote for interaction (a % would need to be set, but I think 70% or more would be a good start) are summited by the Linden Sponser for LL review. This gives the people a voice in how the lands of teh grid looks, but allows for LL to be kept as a "check point" to prevent the system from turning into a "griefing" tool itself. Group members could be rotated out on a specific time-frame (2-4 weeks as a starting suggestion) as well as the Linden Sponser, though I think the Linden Sponser should have a longer time-frame as to allow the system to be more consistant. The Linden Sponser always being the same would be ideal, but asking that is a bit much.

The only downside is the immense amount of work at implementation of ANY such system. As LL has let this go FAR too long. The longer it goes on, the worse it is going to get. After the main flood is taken care of, however, I would think only the rare cases would need to be attended to.

And no, I never entered a JIRA on this. *Shrugs* imo, LL doesn't listen to the Resident voices in JIRA anyway. IF they do, they show absolutely no evidence of it. If they did, we'd have BBC turned back on the forums by now. I love SL and admire the techs who create it and run it, but I am quite jaded on LL management, or the lack thereof.

~Jessy

Yeah, it sounds completely impractical until you consider that the adfarmers will quickly realize that they're just gonna get wiped out unless they change their business model. For a while, they might try to "re-flood" with more ad farms, but that will backfire as the process becomes almost automatic: 16sq.m.? Visible prim? reverts to Governor Linden. Larger parcels might take a few minutes deliberation, but ultimately, advertisers will learn that their odds are improved by losing the llTargetOmega and PRIM_FULLBRIGHT, and by adding some landscaping on larger parcels. Simple enough.

For a while I was kinda accepting the "private property rights" argument, but it doesn't wash with me anymore. If one wants that kind of property rights, buy an island. The Mainland is the Lindens' to manage, and there's nothing in the ToS that guarantees the right to unfettered property rights--quite the opposite, actually.

Well, Qie, the main problem there is that anyone can concider any build an "eyesore". As much as I hate ad-farms, I can put personal opinions aside and admit there are some advertisers in SL that are jsut advertising. I may think it's dumb, but apparently they don't. To each their own.

The ones I'm looking at removing are the 16/m plots selling for 45,000 L$ and are located right in the middle of a residential style sim with no buisnesses in the area.

Particle spewing, or rotating prims should also be looked at for annoynace and client-effect factors.

The first example is one I think should just be siezed by LL. People like that, we don't need or want in SL. On the second, it might just be people who don't know any better as to what effects other client viewers. However, since they don't live ont hose 16m plot, I think the people around them that do live there should have more of a say in the looks of the land. So in the second case, a notice sent by LL (or in my solution above, by the Linden Sponser) to work out a comprimise.

While nothing in the ToS states about property rights, every policy of LL points that way. LL wants us to manage ourselves, but has never worked with us to allow that. We have to remain within thier rules, which state we can't effect anyone else, but if we are to govern ourselves, then we need to effect others. At least on a "majority rules" ideal.

The milestone to get over is to have LL work WITH us to create a working government within SL. We ~can~ govern ourselves, but, as Qie correctly stated, the Mainland is owned by LL. On private islands, there is no trash, or ad-farms, or any of the other "junk" that is complained about on the Mainland.

This tells us that the problem is LL. That they DON'T manage thier land properly. They want all the authority, but are accepting none of the responsibility that goes along with it. If LL wants us to accept the responsibility of self-governce, then they need to deligate some of the authority to do so, but they need to do so in such a mannor as to maintain fairness and equality.

There's that other thread about "rude Americans" which talks about the fact that SL should be one culture. The SL Culture.

Well, LL had/has the oppertunity to make a better government. That's not in our hands, but in LL's. So far they have not stepped up to the plate and chaos rules on the Mainland for the most part.

When LL was young, it would have been easier. I don't think anyone saw how fast and how much SL would grow. The growth rolled over LL and I think they're still stumbling and trying to catch thier balance from that. I won't beat them for lack of forsight. I do think that LL needs to grow along with SL. I do think LL needs to put in proper management at the proper levels to maintain order.

Rules and laws can be irritating, but they are there for reasons. Mainly because chaos may seem appealing at first, but only until the individual is lost in the roar of the crowd and can no longer be heard. At that point, chaos becomes hell.

The decision to have order to ensure peace is entirely in LL's hands. I, and numerous other Residents, stand ready to aid and assist LL. All LL needs to do is ask.

~Jessy

how about anything say under 256 sq m can't be set for anything higher than 2-2.5 of what the base average is so right now the highest you could set it is for 200-250 L$ for a 16 sq m plot i might even go to 5 times maybe that still is 500 a sq 16 plot and though overpriced not really profitable to have lots of them the tier would eat it up in a month

I'd be intrigued to know how many 'trash-free' Private Island estates are financed by mainland-blighting ad-farms. I know LL will never release the exact names and numbers to us hoi polloi but if any Lindens out there would care to release a ballpark figure it would be greatly appreciated. Sometimes it helps to know the scale of what one is up against.

Still not fair to honest land-sellers. Some small plots are prime land *shrugs*

My monetary idea was to charge 512m tier minimum for any parcel per sim. So 100 16m plots in 100 sims would add up to 51,200m worth of tier. This hurts the real advertisers though, because they don't need 512m of land. I suppose it might open up a new market for rentals on ad lands, but for someone who just wants to put up a single ad...*Shrugs*

As long as people say that ads do something in SL for advertising buisness, the ads are going to stay. I personally think the facts supporting ads are full of crap. No one I talk to even looks twice at ad signs, except maybe to see who to boycott. With the Search feature right as part of teh world, advertising off your buisness site is meaningless, unless in another heavy traffic area. Which said area will be owned by another buisness.

If people really wanted to advertise, they'd trade ad signs amoung the buisnesses. Put up 5 buisness signs at your store to have 5 other stores put up one of yorus at each. Ads in residential areas only get a moderum of hits, and I'd bet most of those are newbies still exploring the world.

As for ads on land...why? Why not just build another store on a 512m plot? Even with limited prims, there could still be a vendor for all the items, or just the highlights, and with a Landmark giver to the main store.

Quite frankly, I see the ads on 16m plots as people who can't run a buisness. I've truely never seen any buisness advertised on such media that was worth even browsing, let alone buying.

~Jessy