How can an roadside billboard network function in Second Life?

I'm wondering this, how can a billboard network in Second Life be accepted in general?

Ad farming aside! They are the root of problem for making it really hard to make outdoors advertising work fluently.

I've ran now for over an year an outdoors advertising network, The Mainostaulu Network, we have put A LOT of work to have nice billboards, and work with the neighbours, support arbor project, stop & hinder ad farming etc. but no matter the amount of good will, we still keep getting every now and then negative remarks, granted, many of them are trolls, griefers and people who generally hate all advertising.

However, problem remains, many business owners prefer not to advertise with us because of the possible controversy and negative impact.

SO, how can that be changed? What does people expect?

Advertising is a necessary part of businesses, and we are giving a less obtrusive, better looking alternative, however, that doesn't seem to be enough.

The irony is that A LOT of people actually prefer to have our billboards close to their places, many has considered them highly informative, and some people even ask to buy our billboards, infact, from neighbour contacts about 1/4th or 1/5th is requests to buy our billboard designs (which we have plenty).

So, any ideas here? What would you expect? Do you know us and see a possible problem?

PPC was considered aswell rather negative in web at a point, until google started doing PPC advertising. Is this a similar case?

For more information of us you can check out: http://www.sl-international-business.com/mainostaulu-advertising.php

I'd greatly appreciate more community input to make the network better for both businesses, and individuals alike, those who advertise and those who see the ads.

Thanks,
Tyrian

PS. Btw, we already have for example 3 entertainment channels.

Simple enough.... I purchase items through word of mouth or simple search. Any form of 'advertising' turns me off completely.

You think that tall cylindrical column with multiple ads looks good? Or when you cut up a 512 diagonally to put a huge ass billboard up? No matter how pretty you think your ads are, there are plenty of us that despise them and see them as exactly the same as ad farms.

Your technology would be better used in partnership with places that have organized (or not) events, not blind advertising on the road in a point-to-point teleport world. Sell yourself as an advertising network between venues, and that might make some sense, instead of cluttering up the skyline with your stuff.

In Real Life, billboard advertising works because people are constrained to travel along the highways. When used well, the billboards can be placed along a road in a manner that ensures they are not eyesores. But you don't put huge billboards on residential side streets, or in the middle of a public park...

In SL, where everyone can fly and teleport, there is no "constrained path of travel" to restrict billboard advertising to. So we get huge rotating ad farms that are an eyesore to people for hundreds of meters in every direction...

While you might be able, in an "urban sim" like Bay City, to place low-level billboard ads that could be seen from the street, most of the advertiser's target market will never see them. So they are a very poor form of advertising, and annoy a lot more people than they serve.

If I was interested in providing an advertising service for SL, I wouldn't do in-world ads at all. I'd have a website, like SLX or other services, and the ads would be there - searchable and able to provide SLURL's for instant teleportation to the store that is paying for the ad. THAT would be useful. But in-world billboards are an anachronism, presuming dense customer migration patterns that simply do not exist in SL.

I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but in SL as in RL billboards suck.

IMHO of course.

The problem is Ad-Farmers have abused and Slapped us around, extorted money from their unwilling neighbors and they are still dicing tons of land into 16m electronic neon eyesores and your wondering how to redeem your reputation?

How about taking a step up and becoming a used car salesman or personal injury Lawyer?

Ooor you might just find a way to police your peers who don't mind dragging what is left of your reputation through the slime.

As someone who has extensive experience with in-world advertising, I can say conclusively that it works. I would not have invested so much time and money into it if it did not. Click through rates are better than traditional web banner ads and while it is true that Second Life cannot have large crowds, if you have ubiquitous placement, you can gain an equal number of impressions and clicks as if you had a large crowd.

Some people will be anti-ad no matter what. It does not matter if the ads are small, if they are in Zoned areas, if they are of a variety of display formats, or even if they are on land that is not for sale. None of these things matter to the rabid anti-ad folks. Nothing will ever make these people happy other than the complete banning of all advertising in Second Life.

The Advertisers Guild is AGAINST land extortionist, AGAINST ad farms, and AGAINST irresponsible advertisers and FOR responsible advertising that gets results.

Ceera's premise that billboards are an anachronism and don't work is patently false. Is there negative lash back from the community? Sure, from terrorists who like to flood my IM and wall in my properties, but these people are the minority . . . by far. Even though they are in the minority, however, these venomous vipers are very vocal with their use of misinformation, terror tactics, and strong arm jack boot thug behavior. I suggest you take a closer look at who is screaming the loudest against ads, and what their businesses are in Second Life. Could there be a connection? Hmmmmm . . . could be!

To me someone telling me it works is an opinion. I have yet to see proof that it does but I have seen a LOT of proof that its annoying and drives more away than it draws. (my opinion)

Toy,

I'd be happy to show you some hard stats and the system that produces them. Give me an IM inworld.

We've had this discussion before. Web click throughs are a marginal number and yours are slightly higher. Which still equates to marginal, but someone out there is willing to pay.

No way to know if it was a misclick from someone flying by, or just clicking out from editing.

Not interseted, My SL doesnt revolve around some so called stats... I hate any form of advertising and I have got along quite well in SL with ignoring it, same as RL. You see, stats have this nasty habit of showing what it wants. I will blunder along aimlessly without advertising, I would never by any item in SL that I dont see for myself or have reccomended by a close friend. Lets face it, all advertising is there for is to sell and maybe if I saw some truth in it I would change my mind, I doubt it tho but thanx anyways

Cristalle,

We track both Click Requests (someone touching the sign) and Click Through (someone coming to the location in SL or hitting a web page). There are always more Click Requests than Click Through.

Our metrics track the following:
Impression Minutes
(made up of)
Unique Avatar Impressions
(who do)
Unique Clicks
(which lead to)
Unique Click Through

We know if the ad is effective based on goal of ad (visitors, signups, customers, etc.) and the results achived. . . not on just clicks.

Just what i were worrying over, that vocal minority is again the loudest here aswell.

Instead of providing something USEFULL, they just prefer to bash and troll.

The irony is that most times when someone like that does something, they are breaching TOS or community standards. Infact, they most often seem to be thugs and griefers alike.

So, how abuot SOMETHING USEFULL?

The ads and billboards aren't going anywhere, it's about time these ad haters would realize that their actions are futile, and realize that they have a choice to do something to benefit, in other words, get on the development, and therefore get their opinions of annoy points displayed.

the irony is that people seem to prefer huge porn ads over nice billboards

Dear Ad Hater,
Next time you decide to complain, think about would you see this advertising rather than the obnoxious sodomistic ads, or maybe even those which are designed to annoy you.

Ah, the Different Opinion To Mine = Trolling gambit. Sweet.

Just out of curiosity, Ancient, do you have stats on ad effectiveness -vs- geography: do ads near roads do better or worse &c?

I'm guessing there are some *very* dead oldbie areas of the mainland, that wouldn't generate much in the way of clicks.

I hate your ads, yes, but I also provided a suggestion that you completely ignored. Why not work with places to make a targeted campaign? For example, pairing up BDSM clubs with shops that sell BDSM gear? And providing meaningful statistics for them? Or is that too much work compared to buying a plot and mucking up the skyline with crap that very few people want to see and are less likely to click?

Great question! It turns out that we CAN see where the traffic is coming from and we can clearly pinpoint the terminals that are not generating impressions or clicks. We have been working together as a guild to come up with appropriate solutions for this, as we want what's best for the community.

We have already started lowering ads in low traffic areas, and response has been positive. We've lowered dozens of ads so far and will continue to do so, but it is a time consuming process. Our next version of software will have auto-lower capacity built-in so when traffic drops below a ROI threshold, the ad will automatically lower. Most of the guild members have a buy and hold mentality to ad parcels, because mainland is very dynamic and what was once a booming mall can quickly turn to tumbleweeds, and what was once a sleepy hollow can turn into a jammin' club. Lowering ads is not the same thing as giving up our parcels, which is in fact the thorn in most peoples sides...they simply want our land, ads or no ads.

As for which works best, roadside or otherwise, the answer is closely related to what’s around the signage. If it’s off roadside and near a popular venue, it will perform better than a top 3-way blocked roadside.

We are also working on our affiliate model for advertising, whereas locations will choose which category of ads they wish to run on their locations, with a variety of terminals to choose from. We have a whole planned release for this coming down the pipe in the next few weeks, but I'll go ahead and tip my hand now.

It would be impossible to rollout an affiliate based system that is purely opt in without the experience and lessons learned with our broader mainland micro-parcel networks. Regardless of what many posters think, processing millions of ad requests and tens of millions of impression logs a month is not trivial. We've been listening and learning and I'll repeat, want what's best for the community.

I love advertising, it's shame it's a huge pile of pants here. I don't want my name to be associated with some spinning spiral of ads, they're ugly.

Put your ads in useful places, I'll happily advertise in clubs, I can make my own billboards for my own commercial areas. Adverts in the sky aren't billboards.

NCI have a decent looking advertising network.

of course its ignored, this is a ad afterall hehehe

Then why doesn't this so-called guild pool their funds and create roadisde ATTRACTIONS (instead of eyesores) and add some advertising to them? Because profit before community with this Guild.

Us vs. Them Divide and conquer. Verbal abuse is not going to get you anywhere with the community-at large.


So you just started this thread in a well known anti-adfarmer forum just to insult anti adfarmers.

You both can get together and make positive changes to the way you do business in this virtual social experiment. Or you can continue to sling mud and the community.

Just so you understand: 16 meter plots on the side of the road on the mainland with billboards on them is not something that is appreciated by MANY of the residents of Second Life. It is a business plan that infuriates a portion of the community. To the point that complete strangers from around the world got together and formed THE ARBOR PROJECT - to work as a community team to put an end to such practices.

ARBOR PROJECT GROUP is an open enrollment group and I encourage all concerned to join. They have a free device you can use to place on your land that bans all adfarmers from your parcel thathave been added to their master Black List. And other TOS-Safe activities to fight adfarming are developed through this group.

This small vocal minority was able to get Linden Lab to change the TOS to go against some adfarming practices - so it is a very effective small minority. Mainland ad plots are and will always be considered a blight on the virtual landscape. And more reform is on its way.

Okay: I'd like to see no more than one ad; no larger than 4x4x4m; no higher than 4m above ground level; on a parcel no smaller than 1024m2; nicely landscaped; with no banlines, particles, glow, llTargetOmega, light sources, sounds, nor fullbright textures; and no more than one such parcel total per Mainland sim. That will be fine. It's refreshing to see advertisers listening to the public.

Ciaran,

We agree and are working on that right now. We have a variety of new formats that we have released and have some announcements regarding community involvment in this very issue coming out during the next two weeks.

For those who missed it, I'll post it again:

We are also working on our affiliate model for advertising, whereas locations will choose which category of ads they wish to run on their locations, with a variety of terminals to choose from. We have a whole planned release for this coming down the pipe in the next few weeks, but I'll go ahead and tip my hand now.

It would be impossible to rollout an affiliate based system that is purely opt in without the experience and lessons learned with our broader mainland micro-parcel networks. Regardless of what many posters think, processing millions of ad requests and tens of millions of impression logs a month is not trivial. We've been listening and learning and I'll repeat, want what's best for the community.

speaking strictly as a consumer, I have no SL business, I find ads obnoxious and avoid ever shopping at sites that must use it.

I find this extremely hard to believe. Nearly every business within Second Life advertises in one form or another, they'd be foolish not to.

OK I am a Twit, troll, ad-hater and Business Owner in Second life that will ALWAYS take a Pass on doing business with you. I have watched Sim after Sim destroyed by ad farmers cutting land up into tiny chunks of 16M and selling them responsibly for 1000l each. As for being a Minority, I see two people in this thread that are Pro Ad's and the rest of us have minority opinions... OK I can handle that.

And I Love your Resistance is Futile line...