SL International Business

PRESS RELEASE - 15th February 2008
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Many people incorrectly believe this is an advertising policy, banning advertising combined with parcel sales, while this policy is all about “Ad Farms”, not advertising itself, like told in the blog posting by Linden Lab, Inc.

Also, some people seem to firmly believe that Mainostaulu is affected by this also, infact strongly enough to attempt extortion on those grounds. In reply to those people, and for Linden Lab’s blog posting this press release has been issued.

Mainostaulu has always been about the community, and the need for a serious, real advertising network. All the advertising networks out there, have an strong negative effect on brand due to the method they’ve been ran. Mainostaulu was formed to be alternative to this, with the nicest billboards available, strict policies on placings, and parcel pricing, every ‘rule of thumb’ has an reasoning behind them. Infact, our billboards are so nice that there’s been a lot of people who prefer to keep them around, requested placing to their business locations and helping to increase the advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, if we see a location with an higher risk to get spammed we buy it and place our own advertising there.

Some of our placing reasoning is as follows:
- Billboards are placed away from other advertising and ad farms. Simple reasoning of brand awareness and advertising effectiveness.
- Billboards are unobtrusive, annoying neighbours will cause negative brand effect for advertisers and the whole network. You do not gain clients by annoying them to be your clients.
- Maximum of 2 small parcels within 50meters or 1 bigger parcel within 100meters. In practice, the distances are far greater, but these are the ultimate minimums. This avoids too high density of advertising and ‘Ad Farming’.
- Bigger parcels have multiple ads. This is because tier costs, and our billing is based on 1 advert per 32sqm basis, thus in order to be sustainable an 256sqm parcels needs 8 adverts, and that’s the practical upper limit also. If we’d charge 8 times the current minimum, we would have no advertisers at all, and in this case, would be subject to the “Ad Farming” policy, as we would have no real advertisers at all.

As for the parcel sales themselves, which many have used as reasoning against Mainostaulu to be Ad Farming, Extortion, Blackmailing etc. There is very strong reasoning behind to set them for sale, and the pricing chosen.

We do not want the community to suffer from having them around, and there needs to be a way for neighbours to get them away when needed. As i said before, annoying people is no way to advertise. Thus we set them for sale, however, we cannot set them at low prices neither. However, occasionally we even donate them to neighbours, and have donated a lot of the parcels to Arbor project for various reasons related to neighbours, brand effect and advertising effectiveness. Also, often we have sold these parcels very cheaply to the neighbours, as low as 3L$/Sqm (Same as what Arbor asks for), most commonly we just give an big discount, and all this is based on the effectiveness of the location. Those who have blocked our billboards have caused us direct financial loss, and this group of people is not eligible for any discounts, and usually we also ban them from all of our parcels.

Pricing is chosen with many factors, and we try to keep the price as low as we comfortably can. However, by their nature alone, advertising parcels are worth A LOT more, especially locations like ours with strict guidelines of the placings.

Why do we place parcels to very high prices then? Low prices would mean all this and more:

- Most of locations would be sold, we would have no advertising delivery capacity AT ALL.
- Competiting advertising networks would buy them out in a blink of an eye.
- Neighbours would instantly buy them out, not even thinking about it.
- Our advertisers would actually rather buy the parcels than pay us for the display time, if prices would be low enough.
- We would be running in a loss, without advertising revenue to speak of, neither any significant parcel sale revenue to justify the infrastructure costs.(human resources, technical resources)
- Before the policy, ’spamvertisers’ would’ve been buying our parcels also, causing our network to actually work against the founding philosophies of aiding the community, combatting ’spamvertisers’ and providing a true advertising platform.

Things that affect parcel pricing are: Neighbourhood type: residential lower prices, commercial higher. Activity in the sim: more active, higher price. Ugly and spammed sims lower price. Specialty interests in the vicinity higher price, and last but not least the buy in cost and land pricing in the area.

I’m sorry to say, but prices like under 20L$/sqm for advertising spots are just insensibly low, either we have them for sale at high prices and let neighbours, competitors and advertisers to buy them out, or we do not sell nor donate them AT ALL, to anyone, by any reason at all, and would need to increase the price of advertising. Furthermore, even 1,000L$ for an 32sqm is VERY cheap in business and advertising sense. Personally, i’ve even spent upto 7,000L$ per 32sqm.

Also, despite all of this, we do also need the parcel sale revenues, it provides us a stable baseline of profit from which we can fund our platform development and expansion more than from advertising revenue alone. Due to all the ’spamvertisers’ out there, advertisers are really wary of buying outdoors advertising, and parcel sales revenue allowed us to continue on even during times when there was no advertising revenue to speak of. That being said, it’s always sad to see a good advertising location sold, almost every single parcel sale sets us back that much from reaching wider presense, and causes work. Finding the locations is very hard, and in a bad day, you might spend 8hours and find only 2 to 4 suitable locations.

This has been a lot of food for thought for you, but i want to give you some more: Is Mainostaulu really spamvertising? Is it really that bad that we set our parcels for sale? Advertising always exists and is necessary, do you prefer something like Mainostaulu or someone like Robo Marx or Umnik Hax delivers the advertising? Would you prefer to have the option to buy an advertising parcel nearby your home or be forever stuck with it? Would you prefer obtrusive advertisng over un-obtrusive(like Mainostaulu)? These all are excellent questions i would like every Second Life Land Owner would ask themselves.

About Mainostaulu Network:

Mainostaulu Network is an SL International Business subsidiary company, formed out of the need for nicer advertising in Second Life, advertising with positive brand effect, and to combat “spam advertising networks”. Mainostaulu isn’t just about advertising, it’s also about environment and entertainment.

Mainostaulu Network Media Contacts:
Tyrian Camilo
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Mainostaulu Network

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