Feedback on Ad Farm post

Don't forget, "October the First is Too Late" (Fred Hoyle, Harper Collins, 1966, ISBN 978-0060028459).

When the bank stuff was going down, the Lab was pretty vehement about not wanting to get into the licensing business. Is the money just too good to pass up this time around? Any chance that you'll be revisiting banking licenses now that you're establishing a new precedent?

The biggest concern I would have is how open for interpretation the final rule will be. For instance, many clubs and music venues rely on advertising as a portion of their revenue stream, but it certainly isn't the main purpose of their land. Are they going to be disallowed the supplemental income because they are not licensed advertisers. What if they have more than one venue? And what about vendors and service providers? Will they still be allowed to advertise on their own land?

Banking is an industry where licensing makes sense to me, but advertising? I don't quite get it. It seems like an area where you would instead want to introduce some zoning ordinances, such as "signs can't be larger than X by Y by Z and must be at least x feet apart", and be done with it. Zoning I get. Licensing in all due respect seems like a money grab.

Honestly, I think this will be, as someone else mentioned, a "Not in my back yard" issue. Sure, we all want publicity for our businesses, but nobody will want the crap near them. Would you like it if one of these licensed adverts was within view of your tenants and I put my rental ads on it? (not that I think anybody in a million years would get a rental customer from a roadside ad or random dumb-ass billboard on the grid somewhere).

If the Lindens want to sell ad space at their telehubs or something, and spoil their own landscape and no one else's, then I can see that being viable. But I think spending our time figuring out how to design licensed ad-farming should have a priority just slightly higher than finding ways to bring back Umnik.

Frankly I'm in favor of Desmond's suggestion! (still LOL-ing)

That’s really a good start, Jake.
Thanks for listening to some of my friends and responding to residents problems.
This requires your best attention in order to repair and prevent more situations like these.

Jack Linden's blog post was fairly clear on that. He wrote, "By Network advertising we are specifically referring to the practice of using many parcels over multiple regions, especially small micro parcels where the predominant purpose of the land is to hold advertising." Under this definition, ads in a club or a mall or a school (like NCI has) would not be affected.

Actually, there's been some open source work done to implement the hard part of this kind of "mass muting" on the client side.

Thank you so much, Lindens! This is a step I've waited for a long time! I hope it will help to make mainland a place where people like to live again and not a junkyard as it is now.


Robo, I hope that LL makes it extremely hard to get a license. Don't forget that it's basically to get rid of guys like YOU!

IE Clubs or places like NCI... We need the extra income from the sings to support our teachers (they got a little spoiled with the odl LL payment jk) We do our best to hide these from view by anyone out of the parcel unless its a long distance away that its not even legible.

If I could make some of my own rules.

Licensed advertisers:
- Cannot have more than one advert per sim.
- Cannot place adverts on parcels smaller than 64sqm.
- Cannot place more than one advert on a parcel. *1
- Cannot place the advert more than 20m above ground level.
- Cannot have prims crossing/hanging over into surrounding land.
- Must have the advert touching the ground at all times, ala billboard, pole, etc.
- Must fit in with the theme of the surrounding area. *2
- Cannot use light, glow, or sounds for the advert.
- Cannot have the advert moving at all.
- Cannot make an advert offer a player items, unless the player specifically asked it to.
- Cannot advertise anything adult in PG sims.
- Will lose their license without chance for appeal or new license, if any of the rules are broken. *3

*1 - A texture switching script to switch adverts every 5 minutes may be reasonable though. But nothing animated.
*2 - Wooden billboards in cowbow sims, shiny billboards in space sims, etc.
*3 - Goodbye, so long, don't come back.

I'm sure I've missed a few things, but I wrote most things I can think of.

No.

THey're sending a new message that parcel purchasers are no longer allowed to spam hundreds of sims with deliberately obnoxious ads. Sim owners are free to try and sell parcels to ad farmers, ad farmers aren't free to spam the sims.

If you paid L$1,000 for a parcel to use in spamming, you're in no position to claim innocence.

Very good point. As mentioned in other posts, the ad farmers have the souls of griefers and are most likely to find other ways to cause pain; none of them, not one of them should get a license. For most of them, it would be rewarding residents with a massive number of ARs. If any of them come up with yet another way to grief ban em, ban em all!

Welcome to Altworld.

The only problem is that land extortion still occurs without having to use ANY abusive content. Look at the example in Carl's post above. There are many examples IN and around my land where I live and work. I am not about to pay hundreds of L$ per sqm to get rid of 15 extortionist holes in and around my land, ones owned by people who say things like this to me:

"It's funny, how some ppl make ugly big money here, while some idiots just waste time and count loses...))"
"you made it personal and i will now f*ck your sl here while you not suicide"
"just understand dumbass, i made the money i wanted on it and much much more... but you lose your anyway worthless lifetime on it "

ARing this particular one does NOTHING. He comes back in days or a couple weeks later and starts his harassment anew.

On the other hand, if this policy means NCI has to take down AdNode, I'll happily comply for the greater good of the community. We will figure something else out to raise money.

I don't mind ads. I read the forums to find out about new products and scroll thru SLX. I like tasteful ads that I see when I go to a club, mall or even a friends house.

But they are usually part of a build that is on a large parcel and the residents are actually neighbors you can talk to. If an ad is just too invasive visually from my plot, I can talk to my neighbor and work it out. For an ad farmer, creating ill will is the whole point. A neighbor with a store or club on the whole would prefer good will.

Lets face it, someone's dream home can be an eyesore to someone else..we can't get SL prettified to the satisfaction of all residents but the ad farmers are a different story...griefing and extortion pure and simple.

I was recently looking for a 8k parcel - to move away from an ad farm and to expand from a 4k parcel... I found many parcels that I would have liked to have with low prices.. and I found out why.. Ad farms all over the SIM.. I decided not to buy the parcel because of the ad farms.. on one parcel I visited there were over 40 16m plots with ads.. some were for sale (the lowest price was 5000$L)

I finally realized that if the price for a parcel seemed a bit low. it was in most cases due to ad farms or parcel cutting.

TO my amazement tho I finally found an 8k plot for 28000$L (wow!) - It was on top of a mountain -- which most people avoid -- but all I wanted was a flat 8k parcel that I could build on.. I have since expanded to 16k.. and I like that mountain top parcels like mine are not targets for ad farms (low visibility) .

I would prefer that ads (farms or whatever) be limited to venues that allow them (in clubs, malls etc) and billboards along SL roads with certain limitations for them

Jack mentioned in the blog that this sort of advertising will be acceptable, as well it should. I've got no problems with adverts per se... it's the land extortion that hurts.

Carl, I don't think (and I hope this is the case) your AdNote system would be a target for this policy. I asked (and I hope I am correctly anticipating Jack's response to) whether or not responsible ad networks would still be allowed to run unlicensed in private venues.

Do your best to allow any person/entity/group to hold only ONE license.

Jack this has made me think perhaps you guys do actually care

I must say I am pleasantly shocked.

Want my suggestions?

Yes well good here they come.
No well tough they are still coming.

A - Limit adverts to roadsides only, at spaced intervals so they cannot be massed together.

B - Sizes must be kept to a real life practical limits and be ground based.

C - Only allow 1 license per Adgroup and charge a fairly high premium to those wishing to hold a license this should stop them applying for extras with alternate groups do not issue license to individuals only a Group.(Important to stop many individuals with a license clubbing together to cause future problems)

D - In line with real world, limit what can be advertised as well. PORN, GAMBLING etc.

E - Do not under any circumstance allow advertising anywhere other than roadsides. (Important to stop HARASSMENT at an chosen individuals home)

F - License allows Adgroup one advert plot only in any one Sim (Important to prevent repetition of same advert)

They are my advertising suggestions!

Now this has in no way prevented what we call ADFARMING though, the extortion practice using 16sqm plots etc.

My simple suggestion to prevent this is to license the ability of a Group to own plots below 512sqm in multiple sims not just advertisers but to all players.
Strict criteria should be met before LL allow any group to obtain a small plot in more than two separate Sims and a license should payed for in the same way as for advertising rights allowing the use of one small size plot per sim only.
Any groups or avatars found owning more than one plot in more than two sims after a cut off period set by Linden Labs should have all lands taken back into Linden ownership.

This idea should instantly solve the problems the Mainland now faces.

It sounds like a good solution to a difficult problem. It should be fun to see how it all pans out, how the system is gamed, so to speak.

Its a good bet that many of us will start to feel a bit better about Mainland advertisers once the rotating, flashing, glowing, particle spewing monstrosities are gone.

Here are some things I would like to see in the licence:
Aside from tasteful ads, appropriate to the region and any nearby regions where the ad may be seen,
No chatting or shouting.
No proximity triggered notecard or LM givers.
No particles
No glow
No light sources, full bright would be ok, I guess.
No megaprims
Ad prims must must be touching each other and the ground. On a 3 prim plot the bottom prim must touch the ground, the second prim must touch the bottom prim and the top prim must touch the middle prim. No floating cubes in other words.
No rotation or other animation except for textures. The advertiser may want to advertise several products and services on one ad plot by changing textures. I don't see a problem with that.


Or better yet, LL could come up with a set of standard ad objects which the could be used.

I hope you plan to charge a little bit for these licenses.

Jack this has made me think perhaps you guys do actually care

I must say I am pleasantly shocked.

Want my suggestions?

Yes well good here they come.
No well tough they are still coming.

A - Limit adverts to roadsides only, at spaced intervals so they cannot be massed together.

B - Sizes must be kept to a real life practical limits and be ground based.

C - Only allow 1 license per Adgroup and charge a fairly high premium to those wishing to hold a license this should stop them applying for extras with alternate groups do not issue license to individuals only a Group.(Important to stop many individuals with a license clubbing together to cause future problems)

D - In line with real world, limit what can be advertised as well. PORN, GAMBLING etc.

E - Do not under any circumstance allow advertising anywhere other than roadsides. (Important to stop HARASSMENT at an chosen individuals home)

F - License allows Adgroup one advert plot only in any one Sim (Important to prevent repetition of same advert)

They are my advertising suggestions!

Now this has in no way prevented what we call ADFARMING though, the extortion practice using 16sqm plots etc.

My simple suggestion to prevent extortion is to license the ability of a Group to own plots below 512sqm in multiple sims not to just advertisers but to all players.
Strict criteria should be met before LL allow any group to obtain a small plot in more than two separate Sims and a license should payed for in the same way as for advertising rights allowing the use of one small size plot per sim only.
Any groups or avatars found owning more than one plot in more than two sims after a cut off period set by Linden Labs should have all lands taken back into Linden ownership.
Any licensed groups found to be breaking rules should have license revoked and land taken back into Linden ownership.

This idea should instantly solve the problems the Mainland now faces.

Uhm, how about "NO." All that would do is let someone make a buttload of avi's and continue to be parasites on the community. The regulations are to get rid of griefers and exploiters who make a fast buck victimizing people by placing strategically placed ads and crap in the middle of a sim.

A BIG thumbs up to Jack and LL. A very welcome announcement.

I suspect that ad farmers had prior notice of this, as there are 2 x 256m parcels in the sim that I am mainly involved with, both of which had ad towers on them until yesterday or the day before. Now the towers are gone and each of the 256m2 parcels is up for sale at around 52,000L. That's cool - there is nothing on the parcels now.


Suggestion about something to disallow
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There's an enormous square-base building in the Seymour sim. It's 32x32, stands on a 1024m parcel, and extends upward to an enormous height. The bottom part of it is an ad on all 4 sides, advertising copies of the building itself, which are for sale. It's ugly because it dominates the area, making the surrounding land unattractive. The building isn't functional. It's only purpose is to sell copies of itself. That sort of grossly oversized advertising ought to be banned along with the more familiar kinds of intrusive advertising.

There's a brief mention on the blog but no real detail:

"No more spinning, floating cubes, no more unsolicited notecard givers, no more improper use of ban lines."