Bitcoin Forum

Hi boy's and girls,

 normally I use an ad blocker - just now I am on a shared computer without and I am shocked of how much BFL advertising I get presented on how many places. Freaky!
i guess that doesn't come cheap? Has it always been that way or are they sucking the last straw to get more customers?
Can somebody estimate how much such a campain costs?

Interesting question. Also its hard for me to understand why they have a need for even more pre-orders when they've already 30.000 on queue and haven't shipped a single unit.

It's not expensive to advertise almost everywhere within the Bitcoin world.

The only thing that really gets expensive are those forum ads, belowr the first post.

It get worse if you visit bitcointalk or butterflylabs website. They are targeted to those who visit those sites.

I see BFL's adds at zerohedge.com and other sites too.  BFL must be paying a significant amount of money for all this advertising.

I see them at normal German newspapers and so on... Would be interesting to know what you have to pay per click to be #1 in the Bitcoin interest group.

Well if you're raking in the millions without having a product..
The question should be how much money of 'yours' are they spending to advertise?

Targeted ads, $0.20 a click probably.

So let's write bots that click their ads :)

make one click from your ip? and then?

Do you guys still get those annoying "Order now" BFL Google Ads?

By the look of it it has stopped. No BFL on bitcoincharts.com, ...

Only the hard coded stuff, like on www.bitcoinx.com/profit, remains.

We see their ads all over the place because they use google and other ad networks to target those of us who have visited this site and butterflylabs.com. As long as they are charging for a product that they aren't shipping, it shouldn't be a surprise that they have a massive advertising budget.

I see BFL advertising all over the net...
Even in my gmail account

I'm BTC noob, just learnt about ASIC hehe
But maybe it good as i have fresh look at this theme...

BFL looks like a total scam to me.
The look of this device (beautiful cube)!
Also it's price, power consumption,
Life time warranty (such eden promises are typical for scams).
Company website, with no info about the company on it.
Now i hear they keep collecting preorders and advertising boldly while not shipping a single device - its typical for scams too.

Did they ever sold anything working before?

The look is very similar to the FPGA miner they sold.  Price is reasonable, power consumption is on par with process size (65nm). Life time warranty only means product lifetime (+ 1 year). The company's location is well known (though I couldn't tell you where).  A couple of forum members have visited the company - Kano and Luke Jr, I believe.

OK. That make things look much better.

But im still in doubt -  why they add today new design if they didn't finish previous ones? They have free time engeneers to make some work? Certainly no. Or maybe they want to catch those who are to careful to spend 1300 dollars, but will think - damn it, 150 dollars is not much i can risk that.

There are plenty of people who have similar doubts, and are waiting until BFL starts shipping the ASICs before they commit any money to it.  It is a reasonable move.

I'm mistaken, there's no new product but "old" jalapeno. It wasn't on BFL site yesterday when i discovered it  :-[ Noobs mistake.

The reason you guys see their ads "all over the internet" is because of retargeting. If you clear your cookies and other temp files, you will stop seeing them (unless google uses IP tracking which is likely).

After deleting cookies you should stop seeing them everywhere, and only see them on a couple of sites where they do advertise. As soon as you visit their site again, you get their retargeting cookie and will then start seeing their ads everywhere again.

Is there seriously anybody who uses bitcointalk who doesn't know what BFL is, and what they are about by now? Why the hell are they spending $1800(so far) to buy up all the ads here.

$1,800 isn't really all that much money when you consider 2 Mini Rigs probably pay for it.

No, but on the other hand they are spending pre-order money like it's order money. They're flying people in from all over the place to sit around and watch them suck at doing everything. They claim to have 22 employees who have been sitting around doing what for the past 9 months? There seems to be cash flying out the door when they haven't actually delivered a product yet.

Yes 2 mini rigs probably pay for it, but the mini rig doesn't fucking exist yet.

Yes, Google / Adsense shows you BFL ads on all sites because you have visited BFL site... based on cookies. Clear your cookie cache and you will see BFL ads only here and some very specific sites.

Is there somebody with an Ad Sense account who can tell us what the cost for this is approx per month?

I doubt it will cost much for them. Google targets the advertising. Doing so, those that are re-visiting bitcoin sites will be profiled. Assume that is 10,000 bitcoin miners and users of bitcoin. Targeted advertisement is hi quality, and can be charged more, but let's keep it simple and assume a cheap 1 cent / banner impression (i.e. without a click on the ad).

10,000 x $0.01 =  $100

Disregard forum ads. Let's say that many ads are dispensed every two days. So, $50/day for the adsense ads per day to be displayed. More if there is significant clicking. Assume 4% click on an ad (which is pretty high percentage), and 25 cent rate for the click. You get:

400/2 click thrus x $0.25 = $50 more per day.

So, my left field guess: ($100 to $200 per day) or a median guess of $150 per day for the ad sense ads alone. I don't know what the forum(s) charge for ad space.

The truth is that they are spending money to get more newbies sucked in their preorder scheme. With already at least 20k preorders in the backlog and without even a working prototype. It's a shame.

THIS ^.

BFL is going to fold up in the next month or two if they can't ship a working product.

It's more than just a shame, it's a crime.

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/alt051-selling-internet-prompt-delivery-rules

But you're not paying that much attention to the drama, right?

That's correct Mr. sockpuppet. If I were unfortunate enough to have placed an order with the BFL crooks, I'd really be upset with them.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159328.0

Josh ignoring paid customers to spend more money luring people into the trap.

Go to their forum if you want a response.  They are not ignoring customers.

JUst before pirate ponzi collapsed some prominent community members had dinner with him in vegas which probably drew in more suckers.