Linden Launches Second Life Web Advertising Network -- Think AdSense for SL

Linden Lab is Beta launching a Second Life Advertising service for its many sites, sort of an AdSense for Second Life users. Very interesting idea -- wiki entry with tutorial video here. Thanks to Cold Spitteler for the tip!

Comments

[OnlyinSL]

Do premium residents get pelted with ads?

[Nan]

See, they really do have their user base in mind! What a wonderful new way to exploit it!

[smiles large]

Is there another company on the planet as discredited as Linden Lab?

[Troy McConaghy]

From a website-owner's perspective, AdSense is a way to make money from a website: you tell Google where to put an ad on your site and if someone clicks that ad, you get paid. Also, AdSense ads are relevant to the content they sit beside: they "sense" the page content - hence the name.

This new program from Linden Lab doesn't seem to provide that functionality. It looks like Linden Lab is selling ad space on their websites only (and maybe inworld too?) It's more like what New World Notes provides: a place to buy ad space to reach a particular audience.

[Sandy Adam]

Are you kidding me !! THIS is their plan to make additional revenue when the educators and non-profits flee to opensim?

[shockwave yareach]

If LL starts making me wade through email ads, I'll remove the email address from their DB. If they make me wade through ads on their website, I'll stop going to their website. If they make me see them inworld, I'll do my dam*est to block them -- perhaps by adding the correct address to my HOST file.

Why can't these idiots understand that lots of people enter SL to escape the constant firehose-feeding put to us every minute of every hour of every day of our lives? We just want to enjoy ourselves. We pay MONEY to enjoy ourselves. Having your divebomb attack on the blue army interrupted by an ad for Annie Lipschtix sheer nylons now on sale may make for an amusing story to explain why you crashed your plane. But it's NOT fun.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

@shockwave, they are running out of venture capital. They need any streams they can get before the company floats downstream.

Check the advert itself rather than Hamlet's cropped image. I imagine that I'll now be seeing ads represented by the "models" in this promotion: Lolita in combat boots, sketchy droog in neko ears, and Steampunk stalker-dude.

Bring 'em on! I need the laughs all winter long. I read my spam e-mail pleas for cash, too.

[Hiro Pendragon]

Is this like what they banned Ancient Shriner from doing with code4software?

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

@Ignatius, LL has long long long long paid back whatever VC funding they got — they just raised US$11 millions, and that's just a fifth of the profit they made every year — until 2009 at least...

In any case, I've signed up for their "ad serving" technology, and I just saw ads for SL Marketplace and Search Classifieds, nothing else.

It's also in a very early Beta!

[Alvi Halderman]

Woah, That's Anticompetitive....

[Wili Clip]

Advertising in relation with virtual worlds reminds me of a flat 2d INTERNET and its growth in its initial stages (if you believe me or not) internet growth was supported by advertisements. Our largest IT giants are feeding on advertising - Google, Facebook...

How do webmasters and bloggers pay for their web hosting? They put advertisements on their sites. Most successful ones are able to make a living from blogging.

Second Life has lost its grip and a lot of virtual places are closing down because people can't generate enough profit with their virtual businesses.

NEMO from Sextan Sheperd is closing down because he can not afford to keep up with costs.

I doubt that angry people will stop using sl marketplace because of ads. They had same ad system on xstreet.

I believe that advertising is important and can also help virtual economy. Because so much second life residents dislike Linden Lab it wouldn't be rational for them to bring advertising in world - this is an opportunity for 3rd party advertising solution providers.

I am working on my own system (ad network) since summer. It works like Google - Adsense. Virtual land owners can earn L$ for their visitors just like website and blog owners earn money for their.

Advertising in Second Life was slow because noone figured out yet how to make it work. There are more and more virtual business owners that are complaining because advertising was not been dealt with in proper way.

There are couple of virtual companies in Second Life that operate like RL ones and they are making their brands. There aren't many proper ways to increase brand awareness in a grid where traffic is so secularized. Many are using web to advertise themselves.I believe that now is the right time for some inworld solutions.

Wili Clip from [Second Ads]

[SteveNelson]

I did a hack a couple years ago mashing up AdSense and Second Life. I scripted an object that had a couple modes. In one, it scanned the environment for objects, and based on the descriptions it would float Google ads over itself and make itself clickable to the ad landing page. In another it would listen to nearby avatar conversations and float up Google ads based on the conversation content. I have screenshots somewhere. Of course it violated everyone's TOS so it stayed a piece of random hackery in my inventory.