This whole pixel ad thing is getting lame pretty quickly. Pixel ads, for those who haven’t been following, are web pages where each pixel of the screen is sold as ad space. It worked well for UK student Alex Tew, who made $1 million from his aptly named MillionDollarHomepage.com. As with all things involving money, people quickly saw a quick buck. The only problem is: Tew didn’t make his money because he sold pixel space, he made money because of the buzz he created about his new idea.
This hasn’t stopped folks. Google Pixel ads and you get 8 sponsored ads and nearly 900,000 hits, including BuckAPixel.com, MillionPixelClick.com and ChistrianPixelAds.com. Here’s the latest “twist”: Mosaicpixelads.com., which claims to have an edge by creating a, er, work of art from all the pixels it sells. “We took the original pixel ads concept and made it in to a mosaic art form, in the process creating the first internet work of art,” co-site creator Martin Westwood says in a press release. The idea is that the resulting pixel picture will be a mosaic, according to the FAQ.
Lame, lame, lame. The original worked because it was, well, original. People wanted to go visit the page because it was a new idea. The rest will just die slowly, and, hopefully, quietly. BuckAPixel, for example, which tops the Google hits, has had 25 visitors today and has so far sold 11,300 out of 1 million pixels. You do the math. It’ll be interesting to see just how short a lifespan these kind of ideas have. It’s because they’re novelties. Repeat after me: Novelty does not a good business model make.
Yeah, original ideas are good. Static pixel pages won’t last, but maybe something like PixelPPC will.