Hey Linden Lab, Now That You Got AdSense on Your SL Site, Why Not Encourage SL Content Creators to Use It Too?
Cieran Laval noticed that Linden Lab is displaying Google AdSense streams on its Second Life website. With about 300-400,000 unique monthly visitors, that's likely to earn the company income in the four to five figure range in US$ -- pocket change, by corporate standards -- at the expense of diluting the SL experience with contextual real life ads for banks, travel agencies, and what have you. A lot of SLers are irked for understandable and not so understandable reasons, which is to be expected, but there is a way Linden Lab can make their AdSense less annoying, while still bringing in new revenue:
Open up your AdSense stream on the Second Life site to SL content creators -- fashion, games, blogs like this, and so on. As I understand how AdSense works, it's easy enough for an AdSense hosting site to specify the details so that advertisers can create campaigns specifically targeting and running on that particular site. (While the host can still reject campaigns based on content, such as pornography or extreme violence.) I'd gladly drop $10-20 to put an ad for my book or blog on the official SL site, and I bet thousands of other content creators would want to do that too. And while no one likes ads of products they're not interested in, a steady stream of ads for SL content is likely to be a lot less annoying to SL users in aggregate than ads for tampons, action movies, adult diapers, jet skis, whatever. So how about it, Rod?
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I'm game for it.
Posted by: Damien Fate | Friday, February 22, 2013 at 01:58 PM
Well that's a good suggestion if it's feasible, sometimes Google have promotions for new advertisers.
If the ads appear Second Life related, I think we'll see less complaints about them.
Posted by: Ciaran Laval | Friday, February 22, 2013 at 02:05 PM
As someone who has used AdSense for quite some time, I can tell you it doesn't work that way.
You're seeing 'impressions' based upon your previous browsing sessions-relevant *paid* advertising is delivered to you. T
They can't really hook into the creators ads for that-unless they are dropping some dollars to Google for it to happen.
Every ad you see via AdSense was paid for by the creator/owner. You only see that particular paid ad if its relevant to your browsing. The only control you have is whether or not adult ads are shown, that's it.
Posted by: howstuffreallyworks | Friday, February 22, 2013 at 09:49 PM
Ok well, It's being done anyway :)
Posted by: LaPiscean Liberty | Friday, February 22, 2013 at 11:24 PM
Man, there are a TON of residents who would love to rent that space. Why would LL give it to real-life ads first?
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 10:55 AM
"The only control you have is whether or not adult ads are shown, that's it."
Actually, as a site owner running AdSense, you have much more control than that -- you can block specific advertisers for whatever reason. I do that with my own AdSense account, and I guarantee you Linden Lab is already doing that to block ads from IMVU and other competitors. And AdSense also has an "Ad Review Center" which allows the site owner to manually allow or block specific ads or advertisers. A Linden staffer could use that to allow SL-related ads, and block non SL-related ads.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 06:25 PM
There's also ad placement where advertisers can target sites for placement of their adverts.
Posted by: Ciaran Laval | Sunday, February 24, 2013 at 02:45 AM
300-400k *monthly* visits? Uh... my maths were all wrong, then. I estimated from Alexa that they would have half a million pageviews *per day*. It would be still pocket change by corporate standards, of course, but still...
Where did you get your stats from, Hamlet?
Oh, and btw, to anyone wishing to place ads on LL's website, there used to be a way to buy campaigns on Google AdSense specifically on a single site. Is that facility off? It's been over half a decade since I last tried that out, so I have no idea if it still works that way...
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Sunday, February 24, 2013 at 03:31 PM
I'd love to see ads for SL stuff in the SL main page. Whether Ad sense is the way to do it, I'm not sure. Seems that when I go to the SL website, I always get ads for TI parts. So in the future my guess is Ad sense will begin throwing ads for SL stuff at me when I go to the TI webpage too.
Posted by: Shockwave Yareach | Monday, February 25, 2013 at 11:11 AM
"300-400k 'monthly' visits"
VisiTORS, Gwyn. The homepage and account creation funnel gets a lot more inbound from potential new users, but looking at the SL Marketplace and other user-centric sections of the site (where these AdSense ads are showing up), it looks like it's more in the 400K unique range.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Monday, February 25, 2013 at 11:58 AM
Ah, ok, I stand corrected, Hamlet :)
Still, ads from AdSense are "blind", in the sense that anyone views them, no matter how "involved" in SL they are. And it's pageviews that generate income, not visitors... That's why I was asking about the source for your numbers. Do you know anything better than Alexa to measure website traffic?
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 05:36 AM