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?"
Behavioral targeting has been a hot topic on and off for a few years now, with companies like 