I don't know if this is something you would be interested in, but I was doing a little web-advertising research and remembered the way something awful does banner ads: anyone can buy one for a month for $8.95. It seems like a pretty cool revenue source. Their ads run a tad raunchy, but i feel like it could be a hit in the Otter. Obviously there would have to be an approval process. Anyway, I thought it might be an interesting idea.

You mean members could buy banner space? That would be cool. Imagine the possibilities.

The ads at something awful are usually thread related and often self promotion. I think it's a great way for the site to make a quick 10 bucks but it could make advertisment interesting. Whats the going rate for "real" companies to advertise anyways? a certain amount for every certain amount clicked?

It also creates a designated space for referral link-type stuff. Wanna advertise your free ipod account? Pony up, biotch!

I also see otters buying non-advertising banners, like congrats ads and joke ads.

I can imagine people would pay $1/day for a non-ad banner in Other. That could be fun.

Yeah, that would make sense to do if it made more money than the regular ads. I've never been sure whether they did it on sa because it made more money or because it went along better with their overall sense of humor.

I'll chip in a dollar for the first banner that features Scorcho and Kobe in their favorite embrace.

Maybe it could go into rotation with the regular ads... that would bring more eyeballs to the regular ads that usually tune them out. Also, on premium memberships you could block regular ads and/or custom ads. And premium membership could come with ad discounts... I just think it's neat. Imagine the ads that would have run during the Das Monkey-Thor Simpson election!

Geoff lost out on a mint.

This is an interesting idea.

To add some more imput on this.

Say I start a thread in the exchange forum and would like to advertise it to the rest of the board who don't normally hang around exchange. I create a set banner to your specifics. Could be animated, whatever. The banner once clicked would link to the thread. So perhaps it could be something witty like
"Want Fox dvd's that are the New Hottness? Got stuff you consider Old and busted? Well click me to trade up"

Could charge a set amount and toss it into the mix of the other ads. Hell it could even be just advertisement for threads. Say for that DVDTALK HSX game that is going on in Movie Talk or a fantasy sports league in sports. witty banner that leads to that thead that someone decided to pay for in order to bring more folks to that therad.

Hope that helps in explaining the general idea of it all.

I would be in favor of this, I think it would draw more attention to your "real" ads as well.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me. Cool idea.

The problem with forums is that they run through an ad buy's inventory really, really quickly, especially when we're dealing with low runs like we're talking about here. So, for instance, a 10 dollar buy at 1CPM could run through 10k banners in short order, and there's no guarantee that it wouldn't be all newbies seeing those ads.

Additionally, from an advertiser's standpoint, if Geoff isn't careful, it could diminish the value of the brand. Meaning a prospective advertiser could visit the site and could possibly view it in a lesser light if the banner ads he sees are for an El Scorcho presidential campaign or "Click here to trade with me" rather than legitimate companies like DVDEmpire or Warner Bros.

Just food for thought.

If i were an advertiser, I'd be completely in favor of anything that causes people to look at banner ads more closely.