Chris Writes.

Heather Luttrell, President of IndieClick, and EVP of 3jane, spoke for a while about the “myths and misconceptions” of making money from a community by placing banner ads within it. Her discussion wasn’t exactly getting me fired up, but it did get me thinking.

I see two things here:

1. A site like myspace, with a gazillion pre-pubescent pairs of virgin-ish eyeballs, will have ads. It’s not much different from TV anymore: time wasting drivel, mostly. And we’ve already shown that, in a drivelish environment (TV, Freeways, Radio), we expect ads. And advertisers will happily make ads that will appeal to those people. So, back to Jake McKee’s comment from earlier: “everyone goes home happy.”

2. A site that is trying to launch a community around a niche *is advertising*, especially if it’s sponsored or even enabled by the company or industry that community is tied to. This needs banner ads because….um…..why exactly?

Following this thought, I wonder if there is an inverse relationship between the acceptance of advertising, and the amount of niche-ness in a community. The more specific the audience, the more they will resist the presence of ads (because they probably don’t need to be told about the foundations of the community they’re *already in*, and the community will probably be discussing new things well ahead of when you could get a banner ad created, approved, and placed.)

There was also some rather predictable discussion around disabling banner ads for premium users. That, to me, screams an admission that banner ads are something the community shouldn’t want. So you put them there because….um…why exactly?

What if instead there were banner ads, with really relevant (and discounted or exclusive) offers that could only be seen by premium members? Doesn’t this seem more in keeping with the honesty, relevance, and authenticity that we’ve been hearing from everyone here today?

Ugh. At least I don’t sell banner advertising. That there is one ugly business.