Since Alex Tew achieved his goal of selling 1,000,000 pixels for as many dollars, more than 10,000 copy-cat pixel advertising sites have sprung up from the wells of various corners of the web, all with different themes and offering different incentives to advertisers, but ultimately offering the same thing.
Like many of the most enterprising success stories, the concept of “The Million Dollar Homepage” is extremely simple: a twenty-two year old University student decided to, in order to pay for his education, set up a website and “sell” front page space in the form of image pixels which linked to the advertiser’s web space, limiting the number to one million. What is so remarkable is not just the fact that he sold the entire lot, but the time period in which he achieved this. In just three months Tew has gone from an anonymous student in debt to a millionaire celebrity with a waiting list for international primetime interviewers that most of Hollywood would be envious of. The degree of professionalism that Tew demonstrated in undertaking this project was quite remarkable too: from garnering the initial publicity to independently soliciting a fully-fledged New York PR consultant to hiring a team of website coordinators to manage the sudden uptake in volume of purchases (pixel images need to be uploaded – not an easy feat when there are backlogs in the hundreds of thousands) and visitors, Tew demonstrated management sophistication that is remarkable by any comparison.
What “The Million Dollar Homepage” demonstrates above all, however, is how little the technology boom of the turn of the millennium has actually subsided. The very fact that in three months sophisticated corporate advertisers are willing to part with more than a million dollars to grab space on the front page of an erstwhile student’s homepage echoes ruminations of the days when “.com” was the end of every large corporation name. What is more startling is the number of these 'copycat' Million Dollar Homepages that have actually gone on to become successful business models in themselves: not content to have missed the 'link-rush' first time round, corporations are now blowing cash on the front pages of imitation sites.
For some time a groundswell has been developing in the form of online ads. From Google Adwords to pay-by-click, revenues in this disruptive trend have been on a consistently wild increase.
Article comments
1 - DE
I have seen a rising number of click fraud cases from overseas.They are smarter then us at hacking into Google and redirecting the money to their accounts.The money from ads has definately gone down due the number of people trying to cheat the system.
2 - Norm Yerke
Daniel, it's interesting, I found your blog somewhere? I wrote regarding the writings on partial birth abortions.
Now I want to tell you about the latest pixel advertising venue www.pixelblogsoftheworld.com. Try it and let me know how it works for you. Thanks much, Norm
3 - David Anderson
Daniel.
Here is another self-serving comment on the million pixel ad trend. My Shop-a-Rama Family has created a series of one million pixel T-shirt pages which we hope add something credible to the concept. All our content is on a single theme and all the advertisers come from within the Cafepress shopkeeper comunity. There is a touch of guidance for the potential t-shirt purchaser and a bit of interactivity comparable to a rack of t-shirts or a box of old LPs. In the end each page will have just over 1,000,000 pixels worth of T Shirt design images.
It would be great to hear what others more steeped in the advert biz think of our take on the current trend. Enjoyed this blog entry.
4 - Manish Vij
Great Article...Can anybody help me out with points to be kept in mind, to prevent click fraud to maximum, while developing a click based advertising network.
Thanks
Manish
5 - Rob
You've got a really good point, I've often wondered what many companies were really thinking with buying all this adspace, who really clicks ads anyway? Most people like getting things for free. I'm thinking once this huge ad craze is over the internet is going to get a lot more pricey to surf.
6 - Brian
I think alot of times it is not that people "do not click thru ads" people click through ANYTHING that atttracts thier attention. If it is an ad they will click if it is a link to more information they will click. It really depends on WHAT the person is looking for at the time and it all becomes a numbers game. As the internet swells from millions of pages to Billions and then TRILLIONS of pages each individual page is going to have less of an impact and as the EYEBALLS also increase then each page has more of an impact just on a smaller group of people. I think it will all be about NICHE marketing. The person who CORNERS a a NICHE will do well more and more people will feel less inclined to "SURF" and will just stay in thier own safe zone. They will only click on TRUSTED sites and more importantly only click out of those trusted sites to other sites that become trusted because of the first site. I think GOOGLE is going to have to police itself better or it will no longer be a trusted site.
7 - Nancy
My question is, why do advertisers kid themselves that ANYBODY in their right mind is going to click on their ads? Most people - like me - loathe ads in any form and avoid them like the plague. They certainly don't seek them out. Which leads to another gripe: why do advertisers think that obnoxious pop-ups & flashing 'blinkers' are going to sell their crap? I can bottom line guarantee that such tactics are only going to ensure that I DON'T spend a nickel on your goddamned junk or whatever you're peddling. Alienating potential customers by in-their-face ads is NOT a good way to get business. Only someone with a screw loose thinks it will. Personally, I think all advertisers should fry in hell.