Fotino - banner ad replacement software

[sugarkane]

An interesting article here [guardian.co.uk]

Could ruffle a few feathers if it takes off

[Drastic]

>Could ruffle a few feathers

No kidding!

This thing is absurd, IMO. It basically lets your ISP cover up site banners with their own. Not a good thing.

I don't think this could take off, offended sites could filter the ISP ip numbers and send them to a page about how their ISP is the problem.

With the current dot com advertising situation, it amazes me that someone would spend their efforts on (in essence, to me) stealing publisher's banner slots.

[Czar]

I would be worried about this ludicrous piece of software, except for one point.

That is, in order for it to operate, it must be installed. And given the fact that many casual web surfers are irritated by the proliferation of banner ads at present, do you really think that they'd agree to use a program such as this, which would clearly slow down the web surfing experience, while displaying even more ads.

Apart from the fact that this existing banner ads, it sounds similar to an AllAdvantage-style viewbar, which brings up another failure. If AllAdvantage, which had a great following, failed to sell enough ads to keep their service going, and failed to attract new users once they cut payments, it is unlikely that this startup (which will not gain any support from competing ad networks) will generate enough revenue to survive.

[Brett_Tabke]

I would be worried about MSN and AOL reading such talk in that article. As the worlds two largest isp's, they could easily install software in the browser to overwrite or remove banner ads.

I think unless they wanted to go to war with the advertising industry, they could be side stepped with a simple format change from advertisers.

(welcome to the board Czar).

[Czar]

Thanks for the welcome, Brett ;)

I would hope that neither AOL or MSN would be foolish enough to employ a derivative of this technology. Both of these properties generate a great deal of their income from ad revenues, and to attack the industry in such a fashion would not only irritate surfers and indie publishers, it would create a rift between these ISPs and the DoubleClick's of the world. In such a case, I think that ad organizations would commission articles in trade publications pointing out the weaknesses in the new model, which would degrade the ad rates that it is able to attract.

Quite simply, no brand-name ISP would (or should) risk its reputation with both consumers and networks by employing such a controversial technology.