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A new form of advertising has exploded on the net recently and
from the coverage it's getting it may be the next biggest thing
since Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This is because it fills a gap in the
market. While PPC, banner ads and pop-up ads reigned as the
cheapest form of online advertising the costs of these campaigns
on a yearly basis could still run into tremendous sums.
Something cheaper than PPC? Let me introduce PIXEL
ADVERTISING.
THE CONCEPT
Introduced as a new concept by Alex Tew, a student at university
in the UK, the Million Dollar Homepage (MDH) was
launched late August 2005. This unique site quickly
captured the media's interest and as a result generated lots of
traffic to the site and where there's traffic, advertising
usually follows.
At $100 for 100 pixels (minimum purchase at MDH) the premise is
that people buy pixels on a web page and insert an image that
links back to their web site. The end result is a web page that
gets good traffic, which drives visitors, which drives sales.
As of mid November 2005 Alex has sold 600,000 of the
1,000,000 pixels he began with, in UNDER THREE MONTHS.
THE DIFFERENCE IN ADVERTISING COST
Where you could be paying $0.10 upwards for PPC advertising at
say 10 clicks a day, this would cost you a minimum of $365 a
year, or a minimum $1800 over five years.
Pixel Ads on the other hand are a single purchase which last for
years. Take, for example, TemplatePixels.com where you can buy
100 pixels for $50. This $50 will get you THREE years
advertising in the premium area on this website.
With a few well placed quality images this form of advertising
could return more visitors to your web site than pay-per-click
for a fraction of the cost.
WHY 100 PIXELS?
A typical pixel ad page contains 1,000,000 pixels. Spaces are
most commonly offered in 10x10 pixel blocks which provides a 100
pixel surface area and generally cost anywhere up to $1 / £1 /
or 1 of your local currency. Most sell in the 10px by 10px
minimum format since this is logically the smallest usable
space. Many blocks of 100 pixels can be bought at one time to
create a larger surface area.
Some sites, TemplatePixels.com for example, are
beginning to offer free pixel advertising space on part of the
page to draw additional traffic and increase the value of the
paid for pixel area.
STARTING YOUR OWN PIXEL AD SITE
Sounds expensive right? Not at all! The creators of the PHP Million Dollar Script have made
owning your own pixel ad site achievable.
This market leading solution is a fully automated site,
with pixel choice, image selection/upload and automatic billing
all built in. Other scripts available at the moment require the
site owner to manually upload images, email correspondence for
pixel selection and are still lacking in additional features
which make this script unique.
THE FUTURE
At under three months old pixel advertising is still in its
infancy and it's a little to early to forecast its future. But
as this form of advertising is a mere drop in the ocean compared
to existing advertising budgets it's money well spent if you
place your ad on a pixel site with good traffic. At the very
least it's adds another crucial inbound link to your site.
About the author:
James Croft is the owner of TemplatePixels.com, a pixel advert
website where people shopping for web template products (such as
website templates, flash templates, logos, osCommerce templates,
PHP-nuke themes and more) find the best deals on their next
purchase.
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