Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

I don't know if this has been suggested before, and I know it's not going to happen but, since ads are here to stay, it would a very good to set the minimum parcel size for an ad plot to 1024m square, and require that ads are placed in the center, with maximum horizontal dimensions, as well as height.

I know - it's just wishful thinking.

Worth adding to the dicussion. I think the pull quote form Jack is most telling.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/09/more-from-jack.html

This seems the tricky part, an it's always a difficulty. Yes, there are policies being put into place -- but a lot is gonna be taken on a case-by-case, and how it impacts a given land. As a result, it is kinda funny when people look for a specific "I can do this" or "I can't do this," presumably hunting for a loophole -- when ultimately, it is going to come down to "does this plot screw up the sim for its residents" regardless of the specifics.

I'm less sure of how this will be enforced, of course, or if it will be after the first couple weeks. There is some history of policies going by the wayside from time to time, no?

Suffice it to say, if I were an ad farmer, I'd be spending my time looking for the best ways to cash out my chips about not, not hunting for the next thing one can put on that plot to circumvent a specific rule.

An even quicker solution only allow advertising in Bay City!

A certain lady with horrid pink towers already moved out that way so she would feel right at home with all the other hoardings around her.

Then we could all have a nice mainland to wander around in

And if Bay City fills up to quickly then we could have some new zoned advertising only Sims.

Esther chuckles to herself.

Perhaps most of the problem will go away if LL act decisively to stop continued land cutting and extortion.
There would be less small parcels around and advertisers would need to invest in a much larger piece of land and shave off the little bit they wanted before they placed their adverts.
The greater initial outlay would make them think carefully about the locations they chose, as well as if the advert was actually worth having at all.

Especially the adfarmers' alt associations. My dealings with them--- and their public utterances in these and other forums--- tell me that these guys' textures are not exactly Full Bright, if ya know what I mean. Their prims ain't exactly mega.

The fact that they so totally blew what could have been a lucrative opportunity tells me that these guys are rank amateurs. Selling ad space in SL is potentially a good business... but not the way the adfarmers did business.

try this

If you're in the same business you're hardly unimpeachable character witnesses.
We do that, but out of all the microparcel owners we have contacted only Weedy Herbst has agreed to that kind of exchange, and Weedy doesn't even put an ad in the plot. More often we've see the price go up, so the bottom line is that we would probably have been better off not making the effort.

So forgive me for a bit of skepticism.

I don't see anything wrong with advertising your business on SL land. I don't know about what the ads were like, which is something different, but don't get on people's backs just for advertising their businesses.

[Here is my idea... when a resident places land for sale, that land has 90 days to sell... If a plot sells for the asking price GREAT...
Just like now when you choose to place land for sale you MUST choose if the objects are included in the sale transaction or if they are not... Sellers would be required to choose “revert to me the owner” or “abandon if it does not sell in 90 days” to list land for sale.
If the land does not sell in 90 days it automatically reverts back to "not for sale" or is "abandoned" to Governor Linden based on the owners selection at the time of placing the plot for sale.
Land that does not sell or revert back to LL can NOT be placed for sale again for 72 hours by the owner. The owner that has placed land for sale can at any time:
withdraw the sale
change the sale price
abandon the land just like now..
The regulations regarding Mainland network/off site advertising are as follows:
If your ad object is not physically connected to the place it is directly advertising for and it is NOT INSIDE a building or Mall area or event venue, it is considered Network/Off site mainland public advertising.
All Network/Off site mainland public advertising MUST be connected to the ground of the LL estate land... the ad objects can not be over 8 Meters form ground level of the highest point of advertising plot to the top "cut off" of the ad object.
Phantom cuts down on collision while driving LL protected roads and rail roads (the few that are complete) so it is required for Network/Off site mainland advertising objects to be phantom
NO Scripts in the Network/Off site mainland advertising objects that do any thing other then give a single land mark to the place the ad is trying to advertise and only if it is touched by a resident. Full bright is the only feature that can be selected no spin bounce particles spam 1 script you have to click to read further
All Network/Off site mainland advertising should meet the requirements of either Mature or PG region where it is placed and any "LL Zoning regulations that come to be with the LL public works projects.
All Network/Off site mainland advertising objects must be place on plots that are TOUCHING LL protected land and not in LL water
Any single region that has LL protected land may have no more then 9 (Jack you pick the number) advertisements on a LL road or rail road All Network/Off site mainland advertising type are allowed
All Network/Off site mainland advertising taking place on region that has no LL roadways or rail roads or other LL public works projects must be house inside an AD kiosk structure that will be place on a plot no smaller and no larger then 1024 SQ meters
Ad Kiosk may have a single exterior sign 10 x 4 x 1 M that does not exceed 15 M above the highest point of the 1024 SQ M plot is sits on .. No spin or other effects other then full bright on these regions only one ad Kiosk is permitted per region with out LL protected roads rail roads or LL Public works projects
Ad Kiosk may not be place I any region that has LL protected roads rail roads or LL Public works projects
This will solve several problems..
The realistic land value will be easy to ascertain not your best LL guess
People will not waste time and resources listing land they have no intention to sell for outrageous prices they have no real hope of getting.
This will spawn a legitimate advertising market inside popular places and traffic areas owned by business developers…
If you want to advertise at any store, Shoppe, nightclub, mall escort lounge, etc. you as a network advertiser can contact the OWNER and make an arrangements to place any type of advertising they deem allowable INSIDE their place of business
This would include mall court yards completely surrounded by a mall structure or event venues on the mainland only…
This scheme would closely resemble the existing internet where people place ads that show up on a web page they create for a service to users they might not normally be able to afford… Imagine a major RL brand paying you to go in SL and get them results by placing their Real world advertising in a realistic traffic area …. The content creators make SL not AD farmers if you really want to advertise A real market is required this may give a realistic frame work … Your biz might be the next Google placing key ads in popular places that content creators make in our Metaverse
OK GIVE ME FEED BACK so we can get the real advertising started and the Lame ad farms can go AWAY for ever
What are your thought my fellow SL residents
Lets make SL better for every one and get the real business practices of the web in action in internet 3.0 / the meteaverse

o_O

Traffic fraud has been an issue for three years. How much more time should we give it?

The only thing "wrong" with advertising your business in SL is in how it is done. There are good ways, there are shady ways, and there are BAD ways.

Parasitic advertising models are firmly in the "BAD way" department.

Why are you building an affiliate ad network system?

There has never been any traffic fraud, but that aside, the meetings were not long ago, and it does take time to first arrive at what to do, and then to create it. Give it time.

I agree. As I said, I don;t know what the ads were/are like. It's not advertising a business on land that's bad, it's what the ads are like that can be bad.

What legitimate advertisers?
What innocents?

Before I am prepared to grant the legitimacy of ANY microplot advertisers on SL, I will have to see serious changes in the character of ALL microplot advertising. It is far too late to simply have a couple of former ad spammers reform... the well has been poisoned.

I have watched this same problems happen over and over again: Usenet spam, Email spam, search engine rank flooding, comment spam, camping and bot farms and adfarms in SL. I do not believe that it is possible to have any kind of legitimate "free rider" advertising scheme without such massive abuse that it destroys whatever resource it's piggybacking on.

Microplot ads are not like web banners, or even junk mail. They do not provide any measurable fraction of the income for the resource that is carrying them, they are purely parasitic, and are thus no more legitimate than Usenet spam, comment spam, email spam, search engine "promotion" schemes, and other "free riders".

There is no difference between a sim ruined by a dozen big time ad spammers and a thousand so-called "legitimate" ones.
I'm willing to take a chance that someone random will put up a build I don't like near mine. There's a big difference between that and systematically setting up adplots all over the grid specifically to get in people's faces. You can escape a bad build by moving. You can't escape adplots, because they multiply without bound.

You HAVE to be kidding me.

Camping holes? Bot farms in skyboxes? If you don't call those traffic fraud I have to question your sincerity.

Because I want to demonstrate how it CAN and SHOULD be done /right/.

Plus, it's a scripting challenge. Another project I can do for my own edification.

I don't know whether to laugh or just stand there with a dumbfounded expression on my face. You ARE talking about Second Life "Traffic" statistic, right?

Just want to be sure, because there have been MANY MANY threads and town hall issues and whatever else brought up over people gaming the traffic stats.

Just don't know how you have missed all of them all this time.

"I don't see what's wrong with advertising your business on Usenet groups."

"I don't see what's wrong with sending out carefully targeted email to people who have expressed an interest in a subject online."

"I don't see what's wrong with announcing our products in a wiki sandbox, it says it's for testing!"

This behavior is not scalable, and doesn't even (as a mitigating factor) provide any even theoretical benefit to the subject of the advertisement to justify getting in their face, as junk mail or banner ads do.

Sindy Tsure wrote:
edit: here ya go, Rowana..
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=adfarm&w=all
http://www.flickr.com/groups/slgriefbuild/[/QUOTE]

thanks Sindy for the Flickr.com photos of ad farming
i now agree - ad farming can be abused

Well, actually, advertising a business on microparcels in someone else's backyard without making an effort to give back to them for generating traffic that would click on the ads IS bad.

Why is this not seen for what it is? It is SPAM, pure and simple.

Isn't that like fighting spam by writing an ethical spam bot?

I like it Vendar

It would put all the advertising in the best places for it
I would like to add that land sales could be ran similar to ebay where the listing lasts the 90 days you mention but there is a small cost say 50L to list the plot each time.
That would make the whole extortion racket to costly to be worthwile
As the number of plots that don't sell due to the inflated price would take up all of the profits if not leave the seller with a bill.
For normal sellers the 50L would amount to a tiny fraction of the sale, and any business involved with land would just work that cost into their profit margins.
In the future LL could even allow residents to auction their land or sell at a set price just like on ebay

well Robo is now shifting to larger roadside parcels with intend to sell them at roughly L$30sqm, although i was a bit shocked at first to see him buy a parcel of mine, i realise theres nothing real shocking he can do when the new rules are inplace.

i doubt there will be much extortion value in these larger parcels.

Sure we will see some more creativeness from him and alike, trying to outsmart LL, but its actually not that hard for LL to see a patern in their behaviour, and to me it seems thats what they will aim for.

it might take some time, but i am still hopefull

.

Not just that, but if that person builds on a 512+sqm plot, the "nuisance density" is quite low, by comparison to microplot adfarms.

I have yet to see anything in SL that I would call a "build I don't like". Well, with the exception of builds which lag the sim so bad they need to be killed as a ToS violation. Even the most garish builds I have seen (yes, even Torley's Office was hideous.. all that PINK and GREEN "watermelinden" stuff ), I still find something about them that I like. Still, I don't have a problem with builds as long as they aren't there to harass or extort me. Advertising is there specifically to harass me into buying someone's products, so it doesn't qualify for that reason alone.

How do you think an affiliate ad network works?

I go to a club and negotiate with the owner to put up my ad terminal in his club in exchange for paying him a percentage of the ad revenue as rental. Ad terminal placement policy will FORBID anyone from placing them in public/commons areas (like on microplots, or on the outside of their businesses facing their neighbors or roads). Those that violate the policy will have their accounts revoked.

How is that spam?