RL Ads Coming to SL

Caught this story across the wire yesterday.

Vid Game Ad Future Looks Bright

Cool! Thank you for the link Satch!

An' Zero Grace has also asked a related question in the Hotline.

If anything, I think there'll be a friction if "real-life" advertisers start to step of the toes of established inworld businesses because SL is so unique in its platform for content creation. Backed by yuge financial resources, some may already point to fears of corporations establishing whole "content creation armies" to push virtual counterparts of their wares and get Residents to buy "the real thing".

Granted, things like consumable foods being advertised might not be such a big deal as long as they're not IN -YOUR-FACE EXTREME! (ugh), but seeing billboards for "real" cars next to SL ones might be discomforting and confusing—then again, there might be an upside that comes from the "reality is blurred" effect.

Cybergod save us all should we ever see Deuce Bigalow's ass inworld, and not as the butt of a joke in a sandbox! (And for the record, I enjoyed the first movie but I find that hyperlinked example of advertising distracting and unimmersive.)

I'm optimistic product promotion can be done positively.

You know what I"m looking forward to. The day that I can create an avatar that is an exact model of my RL self (weight, height, coloring, etc.), and then to walk into a shop in world, try on clothing and see exactly how it will look on my RL self. Then be able to buy that outfit in world and have it shipped to me in RL.

I think a platform like SL (or its future self) will make buying clothing online a much more appealing thing to do. As it is now, I won't buy clothing online (other than t-shirts) because I have no idea how it will really look or fit on me. And I can't possibly be the only one that feels this way.

I don't really think "big business" is going to hurt "small business" in SL. I shop more at "mom and pop" shops on the internet than I do the big guys. And I'm sure others do as well. Plus the money they could bring to LL could make it so that LL can better fund the equipment that holds SL.

As long as they are bound by the CS and TOS. As long as they can't put an ad on my property unless I want them to. Then I'm all for big businesses coming in world. This is our world. And they will have to play by our rules in the long run, or else they will have wasted their investment because no one will have anything to do with them.

My opinion at least.

Related post and discussion at my blog. I am interested to see whether or not residents will be on par with Linden Lab in terms of bringing in advertisers. I am also interested to see if the addition of "official" corporate advertisers will restrict the ability to express ourselves we currently enjoy in SL.

What I would be expecting would be ads for real cars and SL versions of real cars produced by folks hired by real car companies, and a slew of similar things.

It would probably be a good time to review your creations. When corporate advertising comes, so does the desire to protect their IP (intellectual property), copyrights, trademarks. When this advertising permeates the SL world, the usual practice of protecting their products will follow.

I don't have anything to worry about, but I've seen things in-world that may not be so easily defended when placed under scrutiny.

Oh Dear Lord No!

Theres already too much RL advertising in RL , I dont want to see it in my SL too.

If any of the companies or products that I boycott in RL start advertising or selling in SL I'll end up having to invest energy doing the same in SL.......or I could just chill lol

Akasha

I think something else this will spur, at least in some people, is motivate more inspired, unique SL content creation (sometimes I loathe to say "original" because of all the different ways, like taffy, that can be tugged). I like seeing someone take an offline source or sources as inspiration, but to really pull something in their own direction, or at least mix it up in a combo of ways that didn't apparently exist—or wasn't so existentially apparent—before.

I am really fond of strong, established SL brand names run by nice people that wouldn't have come into being without SL. In a way, I as a person am a product of that too.

Man, this week is like the Tri-pocalypse of SL.

First GOM shuts down.

Then LLab revises the ToS.

Now the door has been opened for RL advertising.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee

LF

Interesting, given:



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Basically:

Benchmark saw the writing on the wall and forced fleck onto Philip.

Fleck is changing the world around

This is the new world: SL isn't a game, advertising, taking over GOM, monetizing residents, developer lists, etc etc

It's sad, but really, SL had to grow up.

If Linden Labs is going to move in this direction, I would prefer to see them take small steps at first. Perhaps they could limit real-life advertising to certain areas? Wells Fargo comes to mind. I suppose this is a natural and inevitable evolution and in many ways I think it will bring good things to Second Life. But I also have my reservations.

I am less worried about advertising than I am about sponsored builds. Right now, when I look around our world I get a sense of excitement and inspiration knowing that everything I see is user-created - and most often for the sheer joy of creative expression. The moment that large corporations step in and begin to pay large teams of designers to build content this entire place will change forever. Do I even want to try to create clothing or cars if I know that I will have to compete with paid professional desigers?

This is a slippery slope and I hope that Linden Labs will tread carefully and slowly as they have on so many other issues.

I eagerly await our swoosh-bearing overlords from Nike®. Just think how cool it would be to virtually pretend to eat a Big Mac® from McDonalds® or to test market RJReynolds® "Lucky Tokes" Brand Tobacco-Free Cigarettes.

This post has been brought to you by the Archer Daniels Midland family of companies.

You know, the big problem with RL advertisement is that it is "in your face" all the time.

It's in your physical mail box (piles, daily), and in your email box and on your television and on your radio, and on your cell phone and on your fax machine and on bill boards and stuck just about everywhere a company can think of sticking it including but not limited to being stuck on someone's ass.

Most ad's don't just tell you about a product, they SCREAM at you about their product. Car ad's are so annoying for this reason that I have quit listening to the radio even to hear the traffic reports.

If SL became like this - there would be absolutely no reason for me to log on whatsoever.

OTOH - I kind of liked the idea of Wells Fargo. A dedicated SIM that a corporation paid for that people could go to if they wanted to. It is education oriented, Newbies could pick up some lindens. Kind of cool.

If corporations bought sims and dedicated them to their theme - I'd have no problem with that. If they were the "in your face" sort of thing, I could just choose not to go there. If they were cool, educational, or interesting I would probably visit them.

The only problem with that I can see with this would be how much of the grid would be sims for players and how much of the grid would be corporate, in your face, advertising?

In keeping with my internet comparison, I would say we would have just as many "personal" sims as we would "corporate" sims. And those who didn't want to deal with the corporate areas, could just avoid them.

Of course, we would need point to point teleporting to ensure we didn't have to fly through a corporate area that we did not want in our face.

I admit i've always thought this an inevitability. SL may have a small population, but it's an attractive target market set, and a group of people highly plugged into pop culture and trends. (I say this because I am totally UNHIP, and yet through SL I see and discover things (music, internet fads, prob clothing trends) that my RL friends and colleagues don't register for months).

There will no doubt be people who would happily be paid to walk around wearing a Sprite T-shirt.

I think it can be done in a relatively stable and not-overly-intrusive way, but Linden Lab will need to be careful here though. Without restrictions, greed often leads to an abuse of "public commons". By this I'm picturing a sky filled with dirigibles with flashing textures reading Coke! Hertz! Burger King! and the roads clogged with vans with 40 meter x 40 meter logos.

Such a thing would lead to a backlash, both on LL and on the advertisers (so it's in their interest to tread carefully, but not all advertisers will).

/me starts thinking about Blade Runner again...

The words of Bill Hicks spring to mind here:

"If you work in Marketing or Advertising... do us all a favour... kill yourself. Do it. Now. You spawn of satan..." etc and so on and so forth.

I agree with him.

Sorry, but most chicks in marketing are *hot*. I couldn't kill them. No.

Oh my!

So when i decide to burn the bank, will the bank support my creative pyro abilities?

Since when do you have an expectation of not having corporate advertisements shoved in you Second Face. It's not like Philip ever said otherwise... oh wait, nevermind.

This post has been brought to you by the fine people at Pfizer® (who are really, really sorry about that Celebrex® thingy, really!)

I support ad revenue in SL. I don't like it one bit from the user experience perspective, but the way I figure it, ads in SL will help to increase LL's stability as a young and growing company. That is a Good Thing.

I suspect that if we do begin to see billboard-like ads, we may find it difficult to escape them on the mainland. Recall that some land in almost every sim is set aside for Governor Linden (at some relatively fixed percentage, IIRC), and could be used for ad space. I'm not looking forward to seeing a portion of my bandwidth eaten up by what are likely to be the obtrusive equivalent of obnoxious, flash ads found on webpages. Ever try to mindfully read an article while ignoring a flashing, highly dynamic ad? That kind of experience doesn't endear me to the company, it makes me frown. It is probably a safe bet to say that at least some ads will take advantage of the direct interactivity of our online world to be more annoying than a nice, simple text ad on a webpage.

I wonder what the equivalent of more targeted, more low-key Ad-Sense kinda ads would be like in SL.

In a virtual space where ads could quite literally be scripted to reach out and grab you, what will the user experience slowly change in to?

Perhaps ads in SL are a double-edged advantage for LL; they get ad revenue. In addition, I suspect a probability of a fraction of users willing to pay extra tier to keep inworld ads away from them by expanding the borders of their land. Maybe more private sims will pop up, advertising ad-free land rental. As soon as the first streaming video of a Nike commercial pops up near my lands in Bisque, you can bet I'll be shopping around private island sims for a new home. =)

I don't want to be paying tier LL so I can be subjected to ads. I get enough of that dirtside. On the other hand, I don't want LL to go down for lack of revenue.

Meh.

As far as distinct sims like Wells-Fargo go, I'm behind that 100.1%. Just not in my backyard. =)

I'm taking a moment to mention the concept of 'Corporate Sponsorship'.

Since nearly all software/television/etc companies that use ads claim they do it 'to be offer the customer quality service at a lower price', does this mean our monthly tier costs are going to drop?

- Newfie

Well, then at least SOMEONE would be uing the roads for driving. =P

Bullshit.

-Ghoti