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Join the Second Life Advertising Beta!


Nelson Linden

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As  part of our continued efforts to provide Residents with new ways to  promote and discover products, services, and inworld businesses, we have  recently launched the SL Advertising Beta at advertise.secondlife.com and we invite you to join the program.

Second  Life Advertising is a self-service advertising system allowing advertisers to purchase targeted display ads on multiple Linden Lab web  properties such as the SL Marketplace and SL Land Auction sites. If this test is successful, then we hope to extend advertising  offerings to additional Second Life web properties. To learn more, check  out Torley’s video tutorial on the wiki, where there’s also more information about the program.

Among other things, SL Advertising features include the following:

  • Display banner ads evenly over the time period you select
  • Target ads to specific SL Marketplace product categories

To join the program, just go to the SL Advertising Beta site and click on the “Get Started Now” button. Please send us all of your feedback, requests, or suggestions to sladsbeta@lindenlab.com. And if you're on Twitter, please use the #slmarketplace hashtag.

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Offer this Free then this would be a good thing do you guys think the users have an endless supply of cash to sink into this platform? wish we did have the magic money tree to keep testing and building your ideas for you but we dont Fix search and let the good days return its just one thing after another now adays why carnt search be returned to its original state that worked and you got the paid adds their aswell and everyone was happy and alot did have spare cash to play around with but the linden hands started pulling users spare LS out of the world with these kind of ideas not much left in the pockets now. Just leave SL alone for a while stop all this dam re-inventing the wheel users will genarate cash for you in their own way just let the platform run without keep moving the goal posts every week amen. good luck anyways but too much lately going on.

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Do you people on the commerce team ever look at the threads posted in Shopping Forums?.  There are countless threads highlighting major flaws in the current advertising and search systems and yet you expect people to hand over even more cash on a new system BEFORE fixing the current one!!!.

Unbelievable

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"As  part of our continued efforts to "screw" Residents with new ways to "scam" even more money from them and let users actually FIND WTF they are Searching for in regards to products."

Why didn't you just start the Blog like that because thats the truth of the matter. I really wish you people wouldn't piss down my leg and tell me its raining the BS is getting way too deep here.

Instead of having a  "milking every red cent" attitude towards your customers you should have had a "lets deliever what our customer base wants" attitude starting about 1 year ago.

I don't feel sad for any of you who work there when the axe falls it will rightfully so, I couldn't work for a company who doesn't deliver a decent product and who is knowingly screwing over thousands of its users for the almighty buck to stay afloat because they made horrendous decisions to screw over the user base.

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I got an email about this a week or so ago, and after checking it out, I sent a query and my questions were answered immediately, or darn close... so I went to sign up, a little excited about being able to advertise in a way that might actually work. Then I seen the price. No Thanks.

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Usablity  - Not very good - Could do with some clearer instructions and  help pages.

Payment - Why don't you accept Lindens?

I feel this kind of sums it all up....

On checking the help page:

Information about how and when to make payments is described in Sections 4 and 5 of the Advertiser Agreement.

Click the "advertiser agreement link' and what do we get?....

Oops! You found a page that doesn't exist

Please click your browser's "back" button and try again.

And @ 0.70 cents per thousand for mature banner versus 0.20 for PG ?

The words Rip and Off come to mind or would you trust a second hand Glam Adapt used ad salesman?

^L^

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I'm not surprised this post is/will be overshadowed marketplace gripes.  My own opinion on that is during the first few months of the new Marketplace was operating without the quirks of "live fixes", my sales were much better than they ever were on Xstreet.  I hope/imagine that when the quirks are worked out, it will be profitable for everyone.

Of course, very few people (including myself) really gave the new marketplace a hard run through during beta and just moved over when we had too. Change is hard.  Nothing new, blah blah blah.

But, back to the post topic, since i don't want to miss BETA input this time

Being a marketing/media professional, I immediately crunched the numbers for the Marketplace ROS Right Top.

90 million impressions at $0.10 cpm is $9,000 total inventory.

If we look at industry standards online click-throughs of 1/4 percent (about .0025%) you'd see approximately 225,000 clicks from the total inventory.

Deduct the average 78% cart bailout rate you are looking at approximately 49,500 total orders generated -- which rounds out to about 1 order every 1000 impressions.

If your average order size is more than the $0.10 cost for 1,000 impressions, the potential for a return on your investment is good (statistically speaking).

 

My only skepticism on the program is the value of brand advertising on the marketplace.  Without hard statistics I'd guess 85% of marketplace shoppers are on a mission to find a specific item and about 15% subject to impulse buys of featured items -- which are item, not brand specific.

If that math is even worth a good guess, I'd say you're looking at 1.5 orders in every 10,000 impressions.   So, is your average order more than a dollar?  If yes, buy in now before the inventory is gone.

 

PS: For those that TRULY believe this is another LL money grubbing attempt I'm not sure your socialistic mindset will ever be cured.  Internet based services' only commodity is impressions.  I'm sure LL could whore that space out to any number of click-per-ad companies and do better than a $0.10 CPM.  Thankfully they are investing back in the community at an incredibly fair price.  You'd be hard pressed to find targeted niche' market banners in any other industry for under a $10.00 CPM and $.78 for un-targeted.   I personally hope all the inventory sells out and the orders roll for those that bite.  Money changing hands is good for the LL economy.  The faster it changes hands the better it is for all of us.  Seriously.. if you can't sell one order in 10,000 impression not only is your ad fail, your products are fail and the entire internet is fail.

 

On the site comments I agree with what a lot of things that Lasher mentioned.   The biggest problem being very unclear about what ad real estate your are purchasing.  The homepage should include a screen cap with clear indication of what space is were.   Also, I saw Mature CPM as $0.25  not $0.70 (with the price slashed).  Maybe I'm getting a special discount just cuz i'm cute

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I am so sick to death of advertising that at this point, if I notice your advertisement, it is negative advertising (I'll remember to NOT buy that product.)

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Advertising is always a money grubbing attempt.  That's the point.  The only point of contention is whether it's wrong or not.  I'm not going to express an opinion either way on that score, but I will point out that LL isn't a charity.

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LL isn't a charity.  The creators of content aren't doing it for charity.  And you don't work every day for free.  Welcome to capitalism.  Advertising is neither right or wrong, it's a tool.

And it accounts for people like Almost, who is among the 99.75% of people who don't click on ads and try to tune them out -- even though he will be assimilated by brand recall.

It's that juicy 1/4 percent that everyone is vying for.  They pay for all the internet conveniences most think should be free, and free of advertising.  Gob bless entitlement.

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The internet isn't free, I pay my cable company $45 a month to have highspeed access to it. I believe what you meant to say is having a webpage isn't free but you know what I didn't force any company to make that purchase so they shouldn't force me to view their ads. Thankfully there are ways around viewing any ads online using browser settings.

I don't have a problem with advertising of products but I do remember the days when you could surf the net and visit some of my favorite sites without those scam ads like "make millions on google" or "buy a 55" Samsung HDTV for $.01" seriously that's the reason people tune them out and don't take advertising on the net so seriously anymore.

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I had to tell my banner blocker to explicitly allow *blogs.secondlife.com* so I could view this page at all. I'm curious how LL intends to get past my ability to block distracting ads.

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Right, I'm confused. Do we create a new account? Do we use our RL name and info? Or do we use our SL name and RL info? How does this work?

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My classified ads don't show up in 1.23-based viewers, unless people disable PG and mature content and leave only the adult checkbox enabled. And in v2, the text is now truncated. Could this perhaps be fixed at some point in the foreseeable future, maybe before you're asking me to waste even more money on advertisements that nobody can see?

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They offered this to select merchants over a month ago. Obviously not enough uptake. Issues with the existing system and Marketplace website continue to go unanswered. The existing ad system fails to provide any value for money so I have stopped using it. What makes LL think i would risk any additional funds to support this system? I see this as just another grasping at the idea of more money for essentially providing the same service which is...to promote and sell our goods via the marketplace for a percentage of the sale price. Stop trying to charge us more and fix the ad services you currently have. They used to sell product, now no longer. Examine the reasons why people are not using them as they used to...and fix it else your ad revenue will continue to decline.

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lol what jokers Linden Lab have become....manipulated All Search, crippled Classified adverts...delivered a half baked/  half working Marketplace......and now they want to sell you more flashing Ads.

If this was 1st April...i'd be really laughing

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Al good points Sassy - And like you  I'm not averse to a company making a decent buck from their website real estate. As for costs, I quoted the rate card price rather than the discount price for beta testing. We certainly couldn't look forward to a permanent 0.25 for mature and the disparity between the PG cost and  Mature is almost breath taking. So I'd rather be realistic and calculate with the 0.78 figure right from start. Unless  they  tell us how long the discount period will last.

I'd like to see more stats up front, not just industry standards. They have access to the metrics and most media suppliers will happily boast what we can expect. Come to think of it most media suppliers will be prepared to negotiate discounts for regular clients.

But wait this service is not coming from SL it's a plug in from a company called Glam Adapt which means they are probably taking the lions share of the income. It also explains why we can't sign up with our SL name and are required to give our RL details all over again.

I'd happily bet my last L$ that that Glam Adapt told the Lab they were in no way prepared to accept L$ as a payment method.

Good luck to anyone who jumps into this pond - they either have a brand large enough to  carry the costs, or more money than sense.

In pricipal I like the idea but for sure it is not geared towards the small or medium sized SL business at the moment and I doubt it ever will be.

^L^

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And again some joking Linden is hitting this bloggs telling us they added a new crappy feature!, Im so glad i allready stopt creating contents to sell in a shop myself since Linden lab compleetly screwed up the SL-economy with PG/Mature/Adult rating land like the total failure of continent Zindra. Next to that please dont forget Homestead/Open sim price rates and a search machine that does not function at all corectly. Besides viewer 2 makes things even worse people are unable to buy land stuff is hard to find it all just makes it harder to focus on things that where so nice to do. Thanks Linden Lab for screwing up a nice virtual world keep it going and you will loose all your customers!

I shall not even start about theire new SLX or what ever that is called now "Marketplace"

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LL is by far the WORST company I have ever done business with in my life.They spend more time trying to figure out ways to empty your wallet then focusing on there exsisting problems and catering to there customers that fund there paychecks. This is why I closed my business down in SL and moved it to another grid where they "enjoy and appreciate" there customers unlike LL who's main objective is to see what else they can come up with to empty your wallet and fill theres. Sure,business is all about making money but is it worth it when you end up labeling yourself greedy and untrust worthy and chase your customers off? I really think LL needs to refocus  there platform but of course that will never happen...they have shown that time after time. Instead LL will continue to think of ways to drain every cent they can from you and then throw you to the wolves when your pockets are empty. They could care less if your business does well in here or not. Bottom line is how fast can they fill there pockets. Phillip made his millions off of this game so why should he care anymore? I will NEVER do business with a  self serving company like LL ever again in my life..it was an expensive lesson.

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As long we cant pay with $L or SL USD account this will not attract many. Even paying from paypal is out of the question.

I was actually looking for this feature for a long time since it also was on XStreet. When I got the email about it and checked it out I was disappointed to see that you wanted me to bring in more money for it when I already had the money for it here.

So LL. If you want me to use this feature and also see it as an actual tool, then you need payments from paypal to be a minimum. And I think payments from our SL USD account should be possible too.

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Hm. My and my partners cash cows suffer from costiveness. This could be a psychosomatic reaction by reading conditions, procedure-steps and prices, said our veterinarian, Dr. Mooh. This is a common phenomen here in the austrian alps, that cash cows are reacting kind of allergic on such offers.

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I do not oppose this campaign. Simple reason, if others are willing to help LL into black numbers, they pay for my game. It's off-world so there is no nagging while I'm in world.

As a poor merchant I would love to go and try, but, only CC are accepted, no L$, no PayPal and the price... well... kinda out of my leage, even while being a discount. Next to that, I do not trust external parties with my RL info (that is why I do not participate in events that require a subscription on an external website).

Still hoping someone resolves, in a positive way, the Jira for advertising Adult items. As a seller of an Adult item I get a fraction of the impressions compared with normal items.

And like others have stated, it would be nice if old issues are resolved too...Now this beta has started I expect the Merchant Team to look at the Jira's again. They must cos it's kinda crippled at the mo.

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