The long-held wisdom of virtual worlds is that events are the best way to drive traffic. Certainly at Metaversed events we have a great time maxing the sim out. Events are participatory, they create a shared experience, and people walk away with something to talk to their friends about. They get people to "engage with the brand", as the saying goes.
Ancient Shriner wants to challenge all of that. He says that distributed in-world ad networks are the single most powerful drivers of traffic in Second Life, and he says he has the statistics to prove it. His ad network records every click event and tracks avatars by unique ID, providing statistics not just on how many visitors are clicking, where they're clicking from, and what time of day, but also telling advertizers how many of the visitors are unique and how many are repeating.
This was all a pretty big shift from what I was used to reading. The popular press has slammed billboard advertising in the past and I've read my fair share of statistical analyses in a variety of blogs. Could there be a problem with the way statistics are being gathered?
Calling up a chart from a blog post (see above, click for larger image) he compared it to statistics his V-Tracker systems gathered at the same place. Most have been making estimates based on random sample data, but using tools that track each individual visitor the numbers look very different. In the example he showed me there was a clear disparity in the estimated number of visitors versus measured number. As he puts it: "they under estimated by 300%. Mine is not an estimate!"
The charts showed something else too: the number of new visitors ads can generate far exceed anything events can be responsible for. "Most events are marketed to the same people," he says, "so you get alot of repeat visitors."
Does this mean that we should forget about running events and just buy up adspace on a distributed ad network? "We're choosy about which products to push," says Shriner, "(you have to be) advertising something people want. That's key: gotta have good product. I wouldn't try to sell tooth brushes here and if Oral B begged me I wouldn't run their ads."
Working out what a good fit would be for a distributed ad network might be more alchemy than science. Right now people selling virtual goods in Second Life seem to be benefitting the most, but there are corporate customers interested in taking advantage of his network already, not to mention his tracking software. As his success continues, the ad networks are growing: he owns nearly 300 plots of land around Second Life carrying his ads, and an associate of his owns 1100 carrying the infamous "Mr. Lee's" ads.
What about liability issues? Only yesterday we carried an article about a planned class-action lawsuit against land extortionists who buy tiny plots of land and put up spinning "For Sale" signs to blight the landscape. Ancient Shriner feels he's in a different class entirely from people who do that since he's using the land for legitimate reasons, and not ever offering the land up for sale. "They are going after extorsionists. how can you be an extorsionist if you never sell?" Even the "Mr. Lee's" plots are only for sale because surrounding land owners begged him to sell, and his costs are directly indexed to how much time it takes him to find a replacement plot. "That's what it comes down to: do you own the view? The answer is clearly no. You can have anything and everything pop up next to you, why not ads?"
I'm not buying these statistics of Ancient Shriner's, which we have no way of checking. I've run my own experiments in ad farms, and found that signs never or rarely get clicked on.
Sure, if you spam the world with enough ugly big signs as Ancient Shriner has, you can get clicks on them. Avatars reach out and click sometimes just to make a texture rez so they can see who is ruining their view. That clicking doesn't correlate to sales.
And even if we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that putting up ugly griefing and often extortionist rotating, large block billboards in Second Life leads to more traffic, that doesn't mean it is right, ethical, just, or good for business in the long run. Because it destroys the value of everybody else's land, harms their business, and harms commerce overall.
I don't oppose billboards; we need them. But they need to be zoned to commercial sims or roadside. Nobody should get to park them in the middle of prime waterfront and ruin 4 sims of views around them to selfishly hawk some cheap product.
And...more traffic to what? Chrischun Fassbinder continues to advertise casinos, which are illegal -- driving traffic to those establishments. What is Ancient Shriver advertising and driving traffic to? Is it anything that is really of interest to corporations in SL?
Until a class action suit against Coldwell Banker, which sustains Ancient Shriner by employing him to run their SL operation, and using his ad networks even for CB ads, we will not see progress on this. Letter-writing and publicity on blogs and the RL media has not made Coldwell Banker cease this ugly practice of undermining commerce for others and devaluing their land, forcing sales for less money, or demanding extortionist payments to Chrishchun Fassbinder, their other employee, who charges $9500 or so for his 16 m2 to be removed from the view. No, only the threat of a lawsuit will get their attention, and people need to slowly but surely begin to crank this up.
Coldwell Banker came into SL bragging falsely on their press release that they were coming first to a world filled with real estate sharks with unethical practices. It's been absolutely appalling to watch them sustain two of the avatars associated with the most unethical practice of Second Life, sign-griefing and forcing of sales to "buy back the view."
Ancient Shriner is merely being coy by not putting his land for sale. He no doubt entertains sales at the right place. And the idea that his partner in his business, Fassbinder, only sells for a high price when asked is a patent lie. Anyone flying around the hundreds of sims where these signs are deployed can see they are already set -- and have been set for two years -- at this price of some $9500 in order to force people to buy their views back. And they do. Which is why he continues to set them at that price.
Shock, horror.
Owner of in-world billboard system says they work.
Well, he's hardly going to say they don't work is he.
Putting aside the quality issue of a lot of these billboards, there is still a fundamental issue with virtual world 'outdoor' - dwell times.
Sure, in the real world outdoor works because we're all stuck in traffic or waiting for something at some point and in the proximity of advertising.
Virtual worlds are different. No-one waits, no-one is ever stuck anywhere. We want to leave, we teleport. Simple.
Of course, there are places in SL attracting above average dwell, such as music venues and places recreated from real world places for example, however, are the owners of these venues really going to want people to see a billboard and potential leave the venue?
In term of having statistics, I'd be interested to see CTR's, or more accurately TTRs.
Also, it's rather fuzzy how this is reported. Clicks on the sign? And...click-throughs to the place advertised? is that demonstrable? Or are "visitors" just people coming to the 64 m2 squares?