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Amid the almost indistinguishable array of copycat pixel websites, including the original, www.milliondollarhomepage.com">www.milliondollarhomepage.com">www.milliondollarhomepage.com, comes the first of the next generation of micro-advertising sites. Says www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com co-founder Simon Wadsworth, "We didn't want to get into the scene if we couldn't add anything to it".

PumpUpTheDots">www.pumpupthedots.com">PumpUpTheDots is the first pixel website to measure and utilize individual buyers' ads click-thrus through the size of their respective banners. As a banner, or dot as the website calls it, is clicked on more and more, so it expands - pumping up the dots, so to speak. It lets both buyers and surfers see at a glance what the most popular adverts are, highlighting their success further. It adds incentive to surfers to click because the process becomes an interactive one. As a result, our buyers are seeing greater traffic, and hopefully greater turnover, while everyone else has a more enjoyable experience.

Simon has just graduated from Leeds University, reading geography, and like the majority of ex-students today, is left with a huge wad of debt. About to spend some time travelling before settling down to full-time employment, he has establish the site from Devon, with the help of his friend and colleague for the past 12 years, John-Paul, who is currently at Kings College London, amassing a similar level of debt, all thanks to our wonderful Labour Government in the UK.

"It's a win-win situation, surfers click on the big ads to see what made them popular and on the smaller ones out of a desire to find something new" says Simon. The interactive element empowers the surfer without complicating the experience, leaving the pixel-advertising concept pure and suffixing a new layer of curiosity over it.

J-P Treen, co-founder, adds; "Advertisers are looking for an edge, and

it's becoming apparent that being 'just another pixel site' is no longer enough to guarantee either buyers or surfers. We didn't just want a new selling point, we wanted to refresh the whole concept!"

The www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com marketing strategy is simple, "we want to generate as much traffic as we possibly can, and we use a wide variety of advertising tools to swamp our site with traffic as well as good old-fashioned word-of-mouth to achieve our goal. We want our advertisers to be secure in the knowledge we are doing all we can for them," says Simon.

Over the past fortnight, pixel websites have grown massively in popularity, and the creators of www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com recognised that the market was swiftly becoming overcrowded. "We've had the site ready to go for a couple of weeks but considered timing to be of primary importance. An early launch would have made us old when it most mattered to be new." Now www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com">www.pumpupthedots.com launches as the Pixel Advertising appears to be reaching a new stage in its development; "considering how little thrust there's been, it's surprising how far it's grown." But those days are over, business is beginning to accept that Pixel sites are sound investments and with this, more discipline is coming to the industry. "It's amazing how fast it's changed - only a couple of weeks ago people were talking about e-mailing all their friends. Now it's about channelling swamp traffic and migrating to better servers - but still no-one's really developed the idea much further than Alex Tew did with the original Million Dollar Homepage." Until now.

Simon is a co-founder of a unique new website being launched on Tuesday 11th October, called www.PumpUpTheDots.com. He has written for student newspapers, both in Leeds and London, UK.

Written by: Simon Wadsworth

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