Advertising on a Free Wireless Network?

Mischievous0ne asks: "I had an idea yesterday, and I wanted to run it past the Slashdotcommunity. Would you use a honeypot (free wireless access point) that covered a large downtown area (3-4 blocks of restaurants, coffee bars, an iceskating rink, a small park, and general hangout) if you had to have a framed banner ad at the top of every page you visited while on the network? Do advertisers still pay for banner ads? Are banner ads, effective? I live in a college town in Indiana, and I know there are wireless users here, but the campus wireless network is severly limited. I'm also not sure how people would react to the banner ad space in exchange for free access."

Comments

Honeypot??

[casio282]

Wait, isn't a "honeypot" a dummy system used to trap malicious crackers? Whatis.com seems to think so too.

Does the word "honeypot" now also mean a "free wireless access point?" Nobody tells me these things...

Depends on annoyanced level

[Subcarrier]

If the banner said things "Would you like another coffee?" and the waitress would bring it within a couple of minutes I might even like it.

Otherwise I'd probably just ignore the banner.

If the adverts were too intrusive to ignore I'd stop using the service.

Locally relevant advertising, that's the thing.

Do Banners == Revenue?

[daoine]

Looking at the latest trends, one thing seems to be very clear. Online business models which rely on advertising as their sole source of income generally fail. The sites/portals/whatever you want to call them that succeed tend to do one of three things:

1. Have a parent company which is willing to fund them at a loss to maintain web presence (like NFL.com)
2. Have multiple sources of income (a la Yahoo!)
3. Have such specialized services/content, people are willing to pay for it(like an ISP)

I can't think of a single site/service which is based on advertising alone and is actually *making* money. Banner ads just don't cut it anymore.

Local ads?

[tsangc]

What if you spoke to local businesses like a bakery, bookstore, supermarket, etc, and bought location specific ads? You wouldn't need to pay for an online ad brokerage house or use their rates, and you could give geographically targetted ads that people who happen to be surfing while having a coffee might actually be interested in since they're right next door. It's unlikely anyone would be interested in the usual online banner ads, but you never know with something that's right down the street and associated with the area.

There would be a lot of work involved-such as proving the ads actually worked, but it would be fun to start such a small enterprise up. Try something like arranging to offer a coupon from a local store on the banner ad itself, and see how many people come in with your coupon to determine the retention and usefulness of the service. Then you could turn it around and use that information to sell more ads to local shopowners.

Calum

Re:is this a joke?

[ergo98]

1. give something valuable out for free.
4. ???
5. profit!

Actually, that's pretty much exactly what network television does, and they're rolling in the dough.

In fact, this is a great idea (if it weren't for the technical problems with it) because it solves the primary problem with internet advertisement: A lack of ability to target advertisements to a paricular group of consumers. In this case because it's a wireless network, you know that they are within a small geographical area, and hence it's a gold mine for stores and businesses in the area.

In any case, while we need to learn from history, history doesn't dictate with certainty: When the first airplane failed to get off the ground, they didn't give up and forget about it. History is full of examples where there are countless failures, followed by success.

Re:You can't make money this way

[ergo98]

Advertisers want to know about the demographics of the people who will be visiting the site. It would be difficult (although not impossible) to develop this information for a honeypot.

In this case they would automatically have a tremendously valuable demographic, which is "people in a certain area". Of course your advertisers wouldn't be Coca Cola (well...unless they had a coke machine near where you are...), but rather local restaurants, book stores, geek hangouts, coffee shops, retailers, computer stores, etc.

Re:You can't make money this way

[marick]

* Advertisers want to know about the demographics of the people who will be visiting the site. It would be difficult (although not impossible) to develop this information for a honeypot.

Ok, how about a guarantee of location. I.e. "Hey, you're just 2 blocks from Bob's Coffee Shop. Mention this ad and get 10 cents off a mocha!"