What is Pixel Ads?

Pixel advertising is the latest web marketing phenomenon. The original idea came from Alex Tew, the author of the Million Dollar Home Page.The idea is simple: create affordable internet ad space by selling pixels for ads on a site that will be viewed by many potential customers for years to come.

There has been widespread press coverage about "pixel ads" and "pixel marketing" via all major media outlets in all over the world. In a very short time, the idea of pixel marketing has really taken off.

Advertisers purchase pixels for ad placement in the form of pixel blocks. When they purchase a block of pixels, they are purchasing a permanent ad, alt / title text, and link to their website.

Every once in a while a Really Great idea hits the internet. This is one of them! Alex Tew from England came up with this idea with his site http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com. Not long after, there were dozens of such sites.

The Idea came from 

The Million Dollar Homepage is a website conceived by Alex Tew, a 21 year old student from Wiltshire, England to help raise money for his university education. Launched on August 26, 2005, the website is said to have generated a gross income of $1,037,100 USD and has a Google PageRank of 7. The site's Alexa ranking as of February 24, 2006 is 1017, having peaked at around 127.

The index page of the site consists of a 1000 x 1000 pixel grid (one million pixels), on which he sells image-based links for US $1 per pixel, in minimum ten by ten blocks. A person who buys one or more of these pixelblocks can design a tiny image which will be displayed on them, and also decide a URL which he or she wants them to link to, as well as a slogan displayed when hovering the cursor over the link. The aim of the site was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating one million dollars of income for the creator, which seems to have been accomplished.

On January 1, 2006, the final 1,000 pixels left were put up for auction on eBay. [1]. The auction closed on January 11 with the winning bid of $38,100.00. This brought the final tally to $1,037,100 USD in gross income.

Inception and evolutions

Tew wanted to find a way of funding his degree studies, since he was starting a course at the University of Nottingham in a month. He had the idea of selling pixels, and even though he didn't really believe anyone would want to buy them, he decided to go ahead with the plan, knowing he had very little to lose by trying. He planned not to market the site, but to simply allow it to become known by word of mouth. Within three days, he sold his first 20 x 20 pixel block, to an online music site. From then on, with only a press release in terms of self-promotion, he sold several blocks a day. To Tew's surprise, it only took about two weeks before he had enough money to pay his first year at university. By now, a number of well-known blogs and UK newspapers (e.g. The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Sun) had noted his endeavor, and the numbers of orders skyrocketed. A month on from the site's launch, he had made $152,900.

DDoS Attack(Distributed Denial of Service attack)

BBC News has reported that the site was subject to a Distributed Denial-of-service attack, commencing on 11 January 2006. It is claimed that the attackers sent blackmail emails to Tew, demanding payment of a ransom to prevent the site being attacked.

This has now been resolved, with a hardware fix. Mr Tew said in a recent newsletter:

"The Million Dollar Homepage is back online after almost 6 days of downtime due to a malicious attack by hackers who tried to extort $50,000 from me. I'm pleased to say that I did not pay a penny, and worked closely with my hosting company Sitelutions and DDoSprotection.com to stop the attack. I can also report that the FBI are investigating."

Plaudits and criticisms

Tew notes that compared to most Internet advertisement, his Web site is good business for his buyers as well, due to high traffic and low prices. The minimum duration of the blocks is five years. Blocks are static in that they are not changed except in extenuating circumstances, such as failure or buy-out of the company posting the pixelblock(s).

Critics of the site claim that it is nothing but a large advertising banner; the defenders point out that what gains it so many visitors is not the banners themselves, but rather the original and novel concept of the site.Some people also point out that Tew has presented no proofs of actually (earning money from) selling the 999,000 pixels.

Copycats

A simple Internet search on "milliondollarhomepage", "pixel advertising" or "pixel ads" will reveal many sites that are seeking to emulate the success of the Million Dollar Homepage - it has become a minor subgenre in Internet advertising. There are even scripts for sale to automate the operation of such a website. However, the limited success of these imitators may have an impact on its long-term sustainability.

Tew claims he does not mind such imitation sites and finds them to be a compliment. He only asked that such imitators at least do something original rather than just copy his site.