How can an roadside billboard network function in Second Life?

Some Puppets think for themselves!

/me applauds. I wonder if we can get a whole pack of fire breathing dragons against adfarms to scorch the earth where they stand. It would probably be more effective than me peeing on them.

Given the entire point of a mortgage is the ability to accrue interest on an outstanding loan, and the payout has to go somewhere, that sounds like a very unstable loophole to me.


Just saying.

You marinate, I will flame-roast.

If I wanted to employ an ad network, I would want someone that could demonstrate that they had a firm grasp of basic marketing common sense. Anyone with a name I can't pronounce fails before they even have a chance to show me what they can do. Is "Mainostaulu" the real name, or was that a typo?


A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. Especially if you're in marketing.

OK, fair enough. The fact that at least one of the prims in that installation had your name listed as creator led me to believe that it was one of yours.

He probably makes/sells ad network terminals and servers that others buy. Many of the smaller ones buy their ad systems, since they aren't technical folks.

It would be fun! Maybe some other folks would want to come and roast marshmellows over the remains. Or considering what I would be marinating with, maybe not.

Ewwwww thats almost as sick as the OP !!!!

I will note that you said "almost". When one spends enough time on mainland getting bombarded with ads, one has to develop a screwy sense of humor in order to stay sane.

I hope that I haven't scared away the OP with my sick humor, and that instead, he is heavily weighted down thinking about the good suggestions people have given him.

Looking at the times of his postings, it looks like he reads and responds in the AM SLT. So, we'll see in about 12 hours.

Jeffrey!

This thread is way to long to read through, so someone else may have brought this up.

Ads don't work in SL. People who buy things generally use search or more often slx and on rez. If I need something, I usually search slx and then visit in world if a model is availiable for view. I am going to guess that I am not alone in this.

Honestly I can't recall the last time I actually read what was on a billboard or spinner, except for the simple ones that say "for sale" spinning over parcels. Speaking of that, why do asshats think someone will actually buy land when the parcel is surrounded by other parcels with huge spinning for sale signs? This generally has the effect of driving me quickly away.

Maybe that has something to do with the huge surplus of 512 and 1024 parcels. You can map many sims and see all those neat blocks of empty parcels. Often nice land and cheap, but the business model pretty much precludes them selling.

Rant over

If they are on their land, they should have every damn right to block you. You will find no greater defender of property rights in SL than me. I think the ad farmer rules are wrong and should be repealed. I am against any form of zoning. A land owner should be able to do what ever they wish on their land. That includes putting up an ugly Ad. It also includes blocking said Ad.

I exist!

(Let the ad farmer beatings continue)

Hey of course it works ..

for the people selling the ads.


It might also help sales some - since there will always be some people who click on the ads and make purchases.

But there is no way it will compare to a good business rep/ word of mouth or even a classified ad.

How could it? - they are billboards that are along "roads" that people do not have to travel.

My family and I had a run-in with Tyrian once while trying to buy land on my home sim. It was a regular sized lot (I think it was a 2.75k m^2 lot.) I wanted to buy it for the going market rate (at a time when land prices were dropping)... so I offered him a figure at the low end of the going market rate. It was pretty high by today's standards. If I recall correctly, he had it marked for L$14/sq m, we figured we should pay L$10, so we offered L$8. L$8 was the going rate per square metre for average land at the time... this land was nicer than average so L$10 was reasonable. That turned out to be "insultingly" low and he whined about how refused to lose money on the lot. I made the mistake of giving him a lecture about "sunk costs" and how an assets are only worth what a buyer will pay for it. But my biggest mistake was pointing out that he was making little if any money from the not-too-ugly billboard he had on the land. (At the time the sim was full of ad farms although we since got rid of all but one adfarmer.) He really took umbrage to a woman pointing out that no one ever even looked at the billboards and that the ads were all for his own businesses anyway (which I inferred was because no one else was interested in renting the ad space.)

Well, I really insulted him! He didn't just laugh it off as negotiating tactics. I ended up on an "official list" of people who "annoy" him... so I was (and still am) banned from his properties all over the grid. But it had a happy ending: I sent a different family member around to buy the land (one without an identifiably female name) and we got it for the price we had in mind in the first place.

I now own two lots on which abut his billboards. I cannot click on the damn things even if I wanted to. I actually acquired the second land because I bought it from him. He had it for sale at a reasonable price. Ironically, in both cases I am the only abutter who DIDN'T build anything right in front of the sign. But I am still on his list and of course I will definitely not be taken off it after he sees this posting.

What I learned from the experience is: If you do business with him, do NOT gripe about the ads. Make sure you don't offer him a price below the market average. And if possible don't be female!

Having seen where some of these plots are, I wouldn't want my services associated with them. I've been put off buying land this week because parcels owned by people in this thread are next to them and as soon as the ads go up, it will devalue the land because they are so in your face.

Roadside billboards, facing the road, and by billboards I mean a big rectangular advert like I see when I drive along roads and not towers of adverts, would have a logical placement.

However the ads I've been seeing, in the middle of sims all on their own, doing nothing but making the sim look messy don't hold much value to me.

Networked adverts, in the right locations, not making a mess of the skyline, would serve a purpose. I'm not at all impressed by these adverts, nor the fact that the people running the ads will happily pull them if they can make a profit on the land sale.

Except that they wouldn't be logical, from an advertising point of view. They know that the vast majority of their potential audience doesn't use the road, so pointing them only towards the road would reduce their apparent effectiveness (I use the term "apparent" to point out that they aren't effective anyway, because people hate the spam, regardless of how it is presented).



Billboards *inside* of venues are the best. Not only can you target your ads, but they preserve the *external* aesthetic of the land for the neighbors.

Yes, that is the real point that we keep tossing out at these people. "We're not adfarmers! We're not land extortionists! We're a legitimate business!". Well, in RL, when a billboard comes down, the land is sold to the neighboring land owners at fair market value. If the land sale is at a loss (rarely is, if ever; it's stupid to pay extortionist prices for land, and expect to turn around and get your money back out of it ), then the business writes it off. "THE LAND OUR AD NETWORK USES IS AND NEVER WILL BE FOR SALE! (except for the right price -- ssshhh!)".

Even the subject of this thread has apparently recently put his ad network up for sale for L$2,500,000, prior to this thread being started. Some 1800 billboards on 55k sqm of land. L$45/sqm; that's a pretty tidy profit, since the majority of that land was probably purchased below L$10/sqm. No, they aren't adfarmers.

Don't feel too bad - I tried to get an add-farmer that I have surrounded to lower his price for a "64m - CORNERS" set of 4 16sqm parcels he has advertised for $L9999 (complete with Ban Lines) and he refused because I belong to the Arbor Group!

After reading all the posts and Tyrian's replies, I have come to believe that he did not come here to get advice on how to change his advertising methods into something more agreeable and beneficial for other residents. He posted here to try to change other people's opinions of him and his form of advertising.

Sigh. I had hopes. Change occurs one person at a time, conversation and communication is the answer, etc. Ah well...

So if Talarus wants to pursue his scorched earth policy against adfarms and others like Tyrian, then the only criticism I may utter would be something along the lines of, "Hey, Tal. Look over there. You missed a spot."

At least he didn't threaten to abuse report you for 'reverse extortion' for offering him a lower price than what he felt the land was worth! That's what one of them did to me. Clearly, LL didn't take any action against me.



I'm with you there! I'm also happy to offer my special 'marinating' service wherever needed.

Indeed.



(Not sure whose ad farm that's from ^)

I think he and all the other add-farmers do that and never will there be an end. It takes a certain loser personality and a little bit of Snake blood to be an add-farmer along with some self-righteous gratitude and self-love along with a dose of paranoia and an extreme amount of anti-"The Man" - they have No Hope.

I miss that game