British Colleges Selling Screen Saver Ad Space

gotroot801 writes: "The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that eighteen British institutions plan to generate income during the coming academic year by displaying advertisements on the computer screen savers of students, professors, and staff members. Why does this remind me of that Simpsons episode where Troy McClure is teaching a Pepsi-sponsored class?"

Comments

Nothing New

[Moonshadow]

Already happening!

I'm the unofficial tech for my residence hall, and make a lot of "fix my computer" calls. You'd be suprised how many "Absolut" and other such products are featured prominately on my neighbors screens :)

What's next, OS adverts?

[gregoryl]

I can just imagine when Microsoft gets a hold of this idea:

IEXPLORER is not responding
When part of you is not responding, try BioV MultiVitimin.

Re:What's next, OS adverts?

[IronChef]

That isn't funny, that's dead serious. On OS vendor has a lot of ad inventory to sell if they get creative. I'm shocked that there isn't a small ad banner in the IE toolbar already.

What is the installed base of IE5? I couldn't find it just now when I looked. But let's look at AOL's user base for fun. They have 29M users. Assume just for the sake of argument that on average, each AOLer user their browser to view 1 web page per day. That's 29M impressions a day; the CPM on "bottom-feeder" banner ads is about a buck. Let's slash that to $0.50, assuming some smaller ad banner and a volume discount.

With a CPM of $0.50 and 29M impressions a day, you are making $14,500 a day. That is about $5.3M per year.

I'm sure there are more than 29M IE5 users, and they probably average more than one page viewed per day, and so on. Even if you slash ad rates, it seems quite possible to make upwards of $10M per year by putting ads in your OS like that.

Sounds like a lot of money, but I guess it's not. I used to work on an ATT project that was axed partway through development... see, it was *only* going to make $10M per year, and ATT likes big projects to make at least $30M per year. I'd assume MS thinks the same way. Maybe that's why we haven't seen it yet.

(Why hasn't MS built spyware and ad-delivery mechanisms into the OS? Then shareware/freeware authors can tap into the Direct Advertising API, and MS can take a cut...)

Re:Enforceable how?

[the_other_one]

The waste basket will be replaced by a shopping cart icon.

Re:UHM

[Moonshadow]

And then you get the brilliant idea that, "Hey, if we password protect these screensavers, and tell no one what the password is, the ads will get even MORE run time, and we'll get more money!"

What do you want to bet?

Grammar Nazi, -1 Offtopic

[RasputinAXP]

I'd worry about the benefits of paying attention in English class instead of the money you'll be saving. It's not going to have much of an effect on your spending habits, but just think of all the benefits you could get with a good college education!

I mean, it looks like you're working so hard at it!

Correction

[Ezubaric]

The as the poster is thinking of has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. The advertisment has a second name, it's M-A-Y-E-R:

Principal Skinner: We can buy real periodic tables, instead of these promotional ones from Oscar Mayer.
Ms. Krabapple: Now, who can tell me the atomic weight of bolonium?
Martin: Ohhh... delicious?
Karbapple: Correct. I would also accept snacktacular.

Re:excellent

[jmv]

and students won't notice it after a week or two

Do you *really* think advertisers pay for ads that aren't noticed? They know exactly what they're doing. Also, the problem is not that much this screensaver advertisement but it's where does it end. Hey, maybe they could start the courses with a 2 minute ad read by the professor. But why not make it 5 minutes? or 20?...

Not new

[michael.creasy]

Durham (my University) was doing this in 1999/2000 when I was in my final year. The screensavers were ads and then when you logged in there was a floating window with smaller ads with no close button or minimize button. The only way around it was to use taskman to kill it, which of course most people didn't know about or to use a unix box. They didn't do it on student machines, but it wouldn't surprise me if they started to. To get a student machine on the network you had to submit it to the IT department for a day for them to install some "useful" software and a NIC if you didn't have one. So it wouldn't be too hard for them to add a screensaver with advertising to every student machine and most people wouldn't know how to remove it.

Web channels

[os2fan]

Didn't MS try something like this with their channel placement thing a few years back?

I'm waiting to see who buys out the Blue Screen space: Can you imagine it if RedHat bought it out. "Well, another BlueScreen: Don't you wish you were on RedHat Linux today?"

Put Onto Students Computers?? How???

[Omicron]

So what the heck is the deal? I read through the article, and couldn't seem to find anything that told me how they are going to get the screensaver onto the students computers. How the heck are they going to do this?

Is part of the internet connection that you sign up for in your dorms going to be a requirement that you put this screensaver onto your machine? I would be royally pissed if my university would make me put a screensaver onto my computer, just so that they could a load of money off of me. That would just seriously....argh!!! Just the thought of this aggravates me.

Would it be a forced install over the network? If so, I would just install ZoneAlarm or set up a firewall under Linux or Win2k. I'll be damned if someone is going to install software on my computer that I don't want. And even if they do get the software on my computer, just shut your screensaver off (they are essentially pointless with many of today's monitor anyway).

So yeah....anyone have more information on this, or things like this? I would be really interested in reading more on this....