Cheesy Ads on the Dashboard?

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this at first.

I was looking through my Random Unsung account today and kept refreshing the page to see whether money was selling on the LindEx, and I saw these ads for gold.

I thought at first that there was some glitch in my Firefox browser, that this was somehow shining through from somewhere else...how could it be on my Second Life page?!

And how could it be related to Second Life? I'm not a gold bug and never buy gold and never do anything with gold.

I kept refreshing the page, and even relogged, it was still there, on this account, but nothing was there when I logged out and went over to Prokofy.

Did anyone else see this?

Then I wondered whether this was just a cheesy ad being pitched to me inside my SL account, the way Google and Yahoo pitch ads inside your email -- the Yahoo ads seem vaguely tagged to your demographic but are mainly those car insurance and belly fat ads, the lowest.

The Google ads seem more attached to what you're actually writing in the email -- and that's so creepy that there's a campaign against it now from Scroogle. BTW, does Microsoft fund Scroogle? Or what *is* it exactly? It seems to have been driven offline as a site, but I see ads for this anti-gmail campaign everywhere.

BTW JOIN ME JUNE 3RD FOR A DAY WITHOUT GOOGLE!

In any event, I thought to myself that among the many ways the Lab might be thinking of gaining revenue these days is by pitching ads inside the account. It's a little creepy, as I had long gotten used to the idea that "I am alone" when looking at that page and my accounts and land groups and such, but of course "we are never alone" online.

I see a lot more SL ads in general these days -- I'm reading the New York Times, I get pitched an ad for LL's Patterns; I'm reading some blog somewhere, I see the SL ad with couples; it's all over. They are marketing much more than they used to.

If pitching cheesy ads into each user's individual page helps them pay their bills and stay in business, great. Naturally, I'd like something more interesting than gold ads, but whatever...

 

 

Comments

[Cetile Resident]

So I just logged in and surely enough, I see two ads for high-end DSLR's. I don't think it's related to anything I've been searching for, though I did have a parcel near a photography studio in-world for a bit.

I don't mind the ads regardless of whether they're targeted or not, though; LL has the right to put them up if they want to.

[Amanda Dallin]

I don't mind the ads but do wonder when they put them there. I've seen them twice but usually their not there at all.

[twitter.com/TammyNowotny]

I haven't seen them yet on my dashboard page— but perhaps this is an experiment which the Lindens are randomly testing. Running ads on the website is not a bad idea, even if it is potentially annoying.

[Jadeclaw]

I haven't seen any ads, as Doubleclick and Google Ad Services are blocked on my browser, but on the SL-forum are threads as well:
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Banner-ads-on-SecondLife-com/td-p/1898933
and
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Secondlife-com-homepage-adverticements/td-p/1902015

[Prokofy Neva]

Thanks for those links, Jadeclaw.

Shamlet has also run an article on this citing Cieran Laval. And for once he makes an appropriate point, that Linden Lab should really open up the ad space there not just to Google ads, but to resident business ads like content creators. Well, why not run secondlife.com like sluniverse.com

[Dox Voom]

I found I was getting weird banner ads like this on Twitter's site. Turns out there was a plugin that managed to install itself on Firefox and was inserting the ads.

Go into your add-ons on Firefox and/or Chrome and remove anything that doesn't look familiar.

[Jadeclaw]

""...but to resident business ads like content creators.""
That's how FurAffinity is doing it. They have 4 adspaces on every page, two on the top, two on the bottom.
Aside from the occasional dealer ad, these adspaces are filled completely by member ads. I've never seen one space running empty and members are queueing up to get an ad running.
Seeing the number of stores on the marketplace, I'm pretty sure, it will be a similar success on secondlife.com.
However, I would reserve the adspace for inworld shops, to get more traffic to those shops. (If I buy something, I buy inworld, whenever possible to support those creators, who still keep an inworld presence.)

[Cinder Roxley]

There was an advertising beta a while back. I bought banner ads on the web profiles for really cheap prices and got a lot of clicks. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Commerce/Join-the-Second-Life-Advertising-Beta/ba-p/671936 Unfortunately, they killed the program only a few months after that with no announcement, and now I guess they're doing these.