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A new form of advertising has exploded on the net recently and from the coverage it's getting it may be the next biggest thing since Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This is because it fills a gap in the market. While PPC, banner ads and pop-up ads reigned as the cheapest form of online advertising the costs of these campaigns on a yearly basis could still run into tremendous sums.

Something cheaper than PPC? Let me introduce PIXEL ADVERTISING.

THE CONCEPT

Introduced as a new concept by Alex Tew, a student at university in the UK, the Million Dollar Homepage (MDH) was launched late August 2005. This unique site quickly captured the media's interest and as a result generated lots of traffic to the site and where there's traffic, advertising usually follows.

At $100 for 100 pixels (minimum purchase at MDH) the premise is that people buy pixels on a web page and insert an image that links back to their web site. The end result is a web page that gets good traffic, which drives visitors, which drives sales.

As of mid November 2005 Alex has sold 600,000 of the 1,000,000 pixels he began with, in UNDER THREE MONTHS.

THE DIFFERENCE IN ADVERTISING COST

Where you could be paying $0.10 upwards for PPC advertising at say 10 clicks a day, this would cost you a minimum of $365 a year, or a minimum $1800 over five years.

Pixel Ads on the other hand are a single purchase which last for years. Take, for example, TemplatePixels.com where you can buy 100 pixels for $50. This $50 will get you THREE years advertising in the premium area on this website.

With a few well placed quality images this form of advertising could return more visitors to your web site than pay-per-click for a fraction of the cost.

WHY 100 PIXELS?

A typical pixel ad page contains

1,000,000 pixels. Spaces are most commonly offered in 10x10 pixel blocks which provides a 100 pixel surface area and generally cost anywhere up to $1 / 1 / or 1 of your local currency. Most sell in the 10px by 10px minimum format since this is logically the smallest usable space. Many blocks of 100 pixels can be bought at one time to create a larger surface area.

Some sites, TemplatePixels.com for example, are beginning to offer free pixel advertising space on part of the page to draw additional traffic and increase the value of the paid for pixel area.

STARTING YOUR OWN PIXEL AD SITE

Sounds expensive right? Not at all! The creators of the PHP Million Dollar Script have made owning your own pixel ad site achievable.

This market leading solution is a fully automated site, with pixel choice, image selection/upload and automatic billing all built in. Other scripts available at the moment require the site owner to manually upload images, email correspondence for pixel selection and are still lacking in additional features which make this script unique.

THE FUTURE

At under three months old pixel advertising is still in its infancy and it's a little to early to forecast its future. But as this form of advertising is a mere drop in the ocean compared to existing advertising budgets it's money well spent if you place your ad on a pixel site with good traffic. At the very least it's adds another crucial inbound link to your site.

About the author:

James Croft is the owner of TemplatePixels.com, a pixel advert website where people shopping for web template products (such as website templates, flash templates, logos, osCommerce templates, PHP-nuke themes and more) find the best deals on their next purchase.

Written by: James Croft

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