Random Jabber

Favicon Advertisements Could Work

• October 2, 2007 ·
• Filed in Making Money ·
• 12 Comments

The Upside

1. Very Small

A favicon is small, so it would be very non-invasive to your readers to display them. That’s one of the main issues I have with other forms of advertisements such as adsense. On top of being somewhat unappealing visually, to generate any money at all, site owners try to blend them to make them look like links to internal sections of their site or they throw them right in the middle of the content which I hate.

The fact that they are small also has another benefit in that you can display more of them. Lets assume you want to display 20 at $10 a piece per month. That’s an extra $2400 per year. Not to shabby for such a small area of ads especially if that is on top of what you’re already making with other forms of monetization. It’s a nice addition.

2. Potential to Make More

The potential is there to make more money than other forms of private advertising. The usual trend is to display a 125x125 advertisement somewhere in the sidebar. Usually you’ll find anywhere from four to six of these advertisements on a site. If your selling them for $10 a piece as you were the favicon, you’re only making $480 per year. That’s a considerable difference. The 125x125 icons are great, but there is just no way you could possibly show 20 of them in your sidebar.

The Downside

1. Very Small

Didn’t you just say that was an upside? Well, yes I did, but read on.

The fact that they are so small could potentially make them more difficult to sell. Once you have a bunch lined up in a row, they all start running together, so it’s debatable whether or not you would actually be helping your advertisers by sending them traffic (that’s the whole point right?). It’s more luck of the draw on which icons get clicked.

2. A Lot to Sell

On top of icons seeming to run together, there is a lot more of them to sell than the normal four or six 125x125 ads (hey, you just said more was better because it could mean more money!). Yes, I did say that, but the fact that there are more is both good and bad. It’s good if your site gets a lot of exposure and actually has the ability to sell all of the spots. If your site is new and doesn’t receive a lot of traffic, you’re not likely to sell any of the spots, so having 20 or so empty favicon ad spots just sitting there on your site doesn’t give a good vibe to visitors.

What Do You Think?

I’ve thought about trying a small section of them here on Random Jabber. I figure it will not hurt anything to try and if it doesn’t work out, no harm done.

What do you think about the whole idea? Good or not so much?

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