The Minority Report

I briefly mentioned Elaine Wherry, a co-founder of meebo, yesterday in my Ada Lovelace Day post.

Web chat service Meebo, always innovative with advertising, is trying out something fairly aggressive: full takeover ads that show a persistent advertisement in the background.

The company says that they already got 1% or higher click throughs on existing ads units on the site, which included rollovers at the bottom of the screen and another unit right in the middle. But the new units actually take over the entire background of the site, meaning users are literally slammed with the messaging. They are presented with an option of removing the add with a click.

And the users don’t seem to mind at all.

Meebo Turns Into One Big Ad, But Users Seem To Like It

Here is a screenshot to the new ads on meebo and I have to say that it’s pretty unobtrusive and kinda classy. I’d do the same thing on The Minority Report but none of you fuckers click any of the the ads! :p

Seth Sternberg, CEC and co-founder of meebo, posted this on the meeblog explaining the change.

Now, the explanation:

As you all know, Meebo has been developing different kinds of advertising for awhile. Getting advertising “right” inside of Meebo is really important. We always want Meebo to be a free service, which is why exploring revenue streams like advertising is a focus of ours. This lets us add new features that you all ask for, like support for Facebook and MySpace IM.
meeblog » Blog Archive » why is meebo… not blue?

Hey, I don’t have any problem with this. Free shit isn’t really free. Some one has to pay for the hosting, administration and other stuff. Good for them and I hope this works.

p.s. I would totally place my ad in Elaine’s meebo anytime, anywhere…

Elaine is the one sitting next to the ugly chick.