Rent pixels now – what am I missing?
An Internet advertising opportunity, www.500K.co.za, was launched at the start of November by 19-year-old Johannesburg student Arye Kellman. The idea is to sell 500,000 pixels of Internet space, where you can place an online ad for R 1 per pixel. 60% of the profits go to Childline SA.
Similar things have been done before: in 2005 The Million Dollar Homepage earned English student Alex Tew enough money to pay for his first year at university in a mere two weeks. The irony is he dropped out of university after the first term thanks to the hype surrounding the site. Read more about Alex Tew here.
Later a US-based web designer called James tried to boot strap himself out of poverty using a similar tactic on his site The Million Penny Home Page. You can read more about that here.
The thing that I struggling to understand is: what is in it for the advertiser? Apart from the fabulous amounts of media interest that Arye is doing an amazing job at generating, what will attract repeat visitors to the site, to see your ad, and drive ROI for you – which, presumably, is the intention?
In my opinion we see ads for two main reasons: location and interesting content. Location meaning that I see the same billboard five days a week while sitting in traffic. Content meaning that I read a certain publication or website and watch a certain TV programme because I derive value from the content, and so form a captive audience for related advertising.
I like the Childline angle though, and maybe here is twist in the tale that I haven’t thought through or worked out. Perhaps the ad spend will be filed under corporate social responsibility and left at that.
This certainly will be an interesting one to watch.
