Is this a good idea?

Too sneaky?

[4string]

I'm developing a new site and I had an idea to motivate people to buy ad space, but I don't know if this is cool or not.

Let's say for a certain topic area there are 10 big ad buyers I'd expect to advertise on my site. I choose one and take one of their banner ads from another site and put it up on my new site giving them a free ad for a short while. Then I approach the other potential ad buyers and ask them if they'd like to advertise on my site. I wouldn't say anything about there being other ads on my site. Though they'd assume their competitor thought it was a good idea to buy an ad and they may be more likely to jump aboard.

Would the original company with the free ad have anything to complain about? Free traffic for them. I doubt the competitors would talk to each other. Is this ethical? Seems sneaky to me, though not unethical.

[ska_demon]

Sounds like marketing to me ;-) (well, one option anyway)
Ska

[rj87uk]

I think thats a great idea, I planned on doing it last month, but decided to work on more content first :)

[rfung]

Sounds good, but I'd stick a related industry big company there instead. If Intel advertises on this (i.e. Webmasterworld), what will be AMD's reaction to considering putting ads in rotation (or not,doesn't matter) on the same page? OTOH, If NVidia places an ad, then Abit might also consider it. Well, maybe, I don't know, but give it some thought.

Great idea though!

[donovanh]

How about joining a big company's affiliate program and using their banners? That way then you might make a few dollar from the affiliation too..

[jcoronella]

How about joining a big company's affiliate program and using their banners?

I'd stay away from making it look like you are just an affiliate, and look like they advertise directly (and maybe a custom banner ;) )

Great idea... it has been done before with great success.

[greenleaves]

It has worked for me, and I see nothing un-ethical in what I did.

[4string]

Great! Thanks for the positive words. It'll be a while, but I'll post my results when I have some.

[conor]

We have done this sort of thing over many markets and many websites - it does work - no one likes to be the first - but everyone hates to feel left out ;)