Do ad farms work?

I know, I know, we've had too many about the horror of ad farms.

But do they actually work?

Do people see these ads and think 'wow, I must try that place' or 'that escort place looks cool' or 'I must give these people my money for safekeeping'?

I know one thing - I'm never going to visit GOA!

They work to destroy the view and value of the mainland. As to their actual effectiveness, I guess they get some clicks. But never from me. I boycott everything advertised via that method in SL and try to let ad cutters know I think what they do is reprehensible and they are profitting at the expense of the community who shares their landscape.

I treat ad farms that are just spinning cubes in the air with the same contempt I treat anywhere that, on landing, I find has a load of campers - I go elsewhere.

If it's a ground level billboard style that looks like it actually belongs there ... I don't have a problem with that really, but when it's just some gaudy advertisment designed to catch your eye rather than actually tell you what the product is or does ... forget it. Full bright and light that affects the surrounding area are often big culprits here.

Broccoli

I ignore the ad farms as much as I can. They have never enticed me to go visit any of the businesses. I've seen a few neighbors of ad farms put up walls to block the ad farms from their views, until the ads get moved higher. I've gotten skilled enough at "not seeing" them that it's become as natural as flying. If you want to make sure more residents DON'T come to your business, buy into an ad farm spinner.

Ad farms only 'work' at lowering land value and degrading residents' SL experience. As far as actually 'working' at selling the products and services they claim to advertise..... no.

They don't work with me.. I make sure I never frequent the places spinning on them! I am also wary of flying to close to them because I read somewhere if you get within a certain distance of them it reads as hit for the client who is being advertised there

Whoooaaa, anyone know if that is true?
I for one never actually pay attention to what is being advertised on these signs, too busy hating the blighters themselves.

I don't even notice the actual ad,I just see some annoying thing spinning and do my best to ignore it.

It's certainly possible to rely on a sensor instead of touch to register a hit. I wonder if the advertisers are aware of this? Still, if they're prepared to treat neighbouring residents with such contempt, I don't see why they'd make an exception for their advertisers.

That's just how pond life operates.

I'm not sure which is worse: Spinning objects or huge prims.

Last month somebody bought a bunch of 512s in a sim adjoining mine and put them back up for sale at a much higher (but still feasable) price. Then they put a HUGE 256m advertising prim in the air above.

I have since met no less than three people who have told me that they'd be love to buy some of this land (one wanted to join some of the parcels into a 2048 plot), but they'd rather not if that sign is going to be in the air for months. One of these potential buyers IMd the seller and got a lot of abuse for suggesting he remove it or use something smaller.

The mind boggles. If I was selling land, I'd do my best to accomodate the potential buyer.

To answer your question, I would say yes. You just named one of the biggest offenders in ad cutting/extortion work. If you remember the name...it must work. Not saying that its positive advertising, but it does seem to get folks to buy the lands if the guy keeps doing it. Best thing to do is to stop buying up the lands... let the ad cutters eat the tier. Once we stop funding it, they have to stop buying and cutting unless they don't mind losing money, in which case, nothing will stop them then.

Hmmm, the more I read about this, the more confused I get, bear with me for a moment if you please.
I genuinely thought these ad farms were about advertising.
But reading some of the comments in this thread and others I get the impression that they're about making a profit on landsales.
I've never checked whether any of these plots are for sale or how much for mind you, so it could be I'm just being naive.
And I seriously don't want to start another war on the subject, just trying to clarify something in my own head.

Yours,
Confused of SL.

There are genuine advertisers and there are land extortionists. They either sell a 16m plot for an unbelievable price, or they split up entire 512, selling most of it off at cost or lower, then sell the corners for extreme prices. There is a difference between land cutter/farmers and genuine land advertisers. Too bad they are all lumped into one category.

They're only lumped into the same category if their advertising methods are equally intrusive and disrespectful to other people in the sim. It's possible to buy and sell land without doing that, and I can think of many successful dealers who manage to do so.

Floating a 256m huge "buy land from me" prim at an altitude of 50m is as crass as any ad farm in my opinion.

Agreed.

Okay, they don't work on any of the people who've posted on this thread, but I suppose they must work on some people, just as RL advertising (including hated TV commercials) work on people in RL.

One thing I don't get is the cutting up of 512 m2 plots into 16 m2 plots and selling them for upwards of 10,000 L. Who buys these plots? You can buy a 512 plot for 4000-6000L at the moment, so why pay so much for a 16 m2 plot, unless you're simply buying them to get rid of the ads? And isn't that playing into their hands? If nobody buys 16m2 plots for 10,000L they stop doing it. No?

So, in another (rather more painful) thread, at , the financials are explicated by someone in the "business." It's alarming for a number of reasons. For one, it seems that some advertisers are spending L$3 PER DAY PER AD IMAGE. So it clearly works for the adfarmers, but there's no possible way that works for the advertisers. I have this horrid feeling that some advertisers are even so naive as to pay per image, whether there are any eyeballs involved, let alone click-thrus. But I suppose in SL, optimistic accounting is par for the course.

My take on battling this is to make each ad plot as unprofitable as possible while staying within the ToS. I've mentioned these before, but: I give away (at Shinsa 128, 165) transparent, phantom Anti-AdFarm Shields that are placed on one's land immediately in front of the adplot; when anyone clicks at the advertisement, they're almost sure to hit the shield instead, and get a handy kit of adfarm-combating info.

In the not-so-long-run, I fully expect adfarms to disappear as a result of a number of demands for the viewer to selectively display parcel content (not least of which is the obvious "roaming cam" flaw in IDV-restricted content, come merger of the grids). I understand that some versions of the Nicholaz viewer has a very initial inkling of this already.

Almost certainly not. A lot of the ads are outworld advertising-the land owner has no relationship with the advertiser other than an automated sign-up program. Indeed, if it were drawn to the attention of these big companies how their ads were being promoted via these ugly ad farms, they'd almost certainly bar that affiliate.

The payment from such programs is usually on a pay-per-sale basis. This means the banners farms must have alienated the small number of suckers who might have advertised inworld, and handed over dollars or Lindens for advertising space.

It is very difficult to get people to hand over their credit-card and pay for some online service. Genuinely speaking the general theory is that you need highly-targeted, content-rich websites to make any sales.
Ad farms on SL, as on the rest of the web, would provide a virtually non-existent conversion ratio of visitors to sales. On the web a webmaster could get round this by buying up thousands of domain names and profiting on volume, but SL just do not have enough regular users for the same strategy to be viable.
Additionally, I am usually very reluctant to leave SL to buy something on the web, its just bad psychology. If you have low memory you would absolutely never do this as your computer will often just crash.


Why then, do ad farms persist? Mainly because once set up there is no incentive to take them down, and the ad farms have the beneficial side-benefit of land extortion.

Green, your post #18 says a lot of what I've been thinking regarding this topic.

At one time someone on the forum mentioned that he or she had a blog or web site where they documented ad farms (or maybe just obtrusive ads?) by RL companies in SL. If that individual or someone else who knows about it could PM me the URL I'm curious to look at it.

It's extortion and sadly some people play into it to remove the blight from their view.

luckily, i have only seen 3 ad farms in my entire sl life. and NONE where i live (*knocks on wood*).

but i always wondered about this too.

me? i have never followed an ad i see. ever.

... in fact .. when two 16m plots went up for sale near me (totally disconnected from my land), i made sure to buy them immediately.

I've purchased four of the 9 16m plots next door to me - but they were priced REASONABLY (about $153L). Three are not for sale, one plot of 16m land is for sale for almost $10,000L, and one is for sale at almost $5,000L ... I built a wall where I can't see them - its phantom so you can fly thru - and on the opposing side of me, totally clear - They went higher with their ads - so I went higher with my wall ...

I've never clicked on an ad - but I notice that the spinning ads are causing lag on my plot which is yet another annoyance. I'll just live with it - for now, and hope that one day there will be some sort of restriction on in-world advertising for out-world products.

Same as RL farms. They produce tons of manure.