Bitcoin Forum

Hello

If anyone was around for the great shoot out of Advertising Round #49 they would know that 10 advertising slots were sold to one person for around $2500USD (for a week)

I personally was one of the driving forces of that high price which if you were there , you know the price was basically driven by pride.

I usually rent 4 slots per week but one certain person was not going to allow that to happen, phallic/star wars references were made and hilarity ensued, and now BFL will be advertising us on all 10 slots for a full week.

Now I am all for the forum getting money, but as I was thinking about this, its really not fair to the little guys who have a right to advertise their business too. I mean I could of bid right a long with him and  got my slots but there are a lot of people around here who dont have the means to do that but should be allowed to advertise if they want to.

I could understand if the price was driven by supply and demand but it wasn't it was driven by pride, ego, (im guilty of those) and the desire to monopolize.

I propose that each person can only get a maximum of two slots
and to ensure that the forum still makes money, each slot should have a minimum cost of say 2 BTC

Thats my piece.
Tom

what difference does it make if you're competing with 1 other person, vs competing with 9 other people, and more importantly, how would you even know?

pride and ego are just as legitimate as drivers of demand than any other drivers.

And what would stop me from bidding on a spot with the intention of selling it?

Is it really worth it to buy all 8 slots? (I thought only 8/10 were available)

And no, the little guy does not have a right to the ad slots, if that means that the little guy gets them for less than the fair price. Not unless the ad slots are a charity donated by theymos to the community.

i was just trying to be fair to the others

when inaba and I were bidding like mad men a lot of people were voicing opinions that they were afraid they would never be aloud to have an add again

I have no problem paying high prices for ad slots, Ive paid probably the highest prices for ad slots with the exception of this week - going back maybe 8 weeks and theymos can testify to that

I was just trying to think of others thats all.

lol this is what I get for showing my thoughtfull side :P

i'm sure you were, cablepair, just that everyone has their own definition of 'fair' :D

personally, i think a free market is the most fair.

i do to,

for shits and giggles go back to Advertise on the Forum 49 and see what I mean :P

I was one that could no longer justify advertising that round, but if someone is willing to pay that price regardless of reason, seems like fair demand to me.

One way to keep the price down is to devalue the spot. E.g. introduce dynamic spots, which consist of 10 distinct advertisements, where each advertisement is shown for 10 seconds and are shown in round-robin fashion. Then auction off the first 3 spots in that series for money (first 30 seconds), and determine the remaining 7 spots randomly. This way people who want to have cheap advertisement can have it at the "cost" of not being within the first 30 seconds....

cablepair, send me one of your machines and i will advertise for you in my signature...anything you want...

This is a tough crowd to get to vote for regulation...  ;D

Putting a maximum on the slots is in my best interest for now, but if the slots are worth 20 BTC each, then the forum should get 20 BTC each for them.

I like the creativity, but I hate the idea.  This devalues too much.  Most ads will NEVER get seen.  I'm one of the target "smaller advertisers," but I wouldn't spend even .1 BTC for one of those slots... also, what keeps the bigger guys from bidding on all 10 "dynamic" spots yielding a static ad?

Well then go ahead and create a counter-proposal.

First 3 slots are auctioned off. remaining 7 are determined by pure chance.
To make the lottery even more fair, you'd want to operate on advertisers, not advertisements.

The point is to mix capitalism with lottery concepts. Give an incentive to spend money - but prevent people from "overpowering" smaller guys.

I think limiting the number of slots per person would result in a significant reduction in ad revenue.

I was thinking of doing something different for round 52 to commemorate a year of ads. Perhaps 20 slots with a maximum of one slot per person.

you mean one slot per sock puppet or one slot per IP address? :D

One slot per company or interest might be enforceable... Is there anyone on this forum that doesn't know how to use a proxy/tor?

The forum itself automatically wins 2 slots per week (except this week, as a special circumstance) for this very reason. One of those slots advertises the ad auction, while the other one displays useful tidbits as well as free ads requested by donators. This is besides the fact that other businesses have several other opportunities to advertise, even within this forum. For example, they can make an announcement thread, buy people's signature space (see my sig for an example ;)), and bring up their services when it's on topic for the thread. And, of course, this forum isn't bitcoin, so they can also advertise in the several other ways out there.