Using Advertising to Market Others While Marketing Yourself

It seems that at least once a week I get into a discussion about "ad blindness". This is when a user basically has horse blinders on and only looks at a specific area and misses any of the advertising slots. A.P. Lawrence defines it as, "Ad blindness is the result of our ability to ignore the predictable."

There are many ways advertisers/publishers have worked to overcome this issue. From changing ad colors and themes to animations and sound, the key is to get the maximum return from an ad campaign. One ad that I think works well to overcome blindness is the Text Link Ads button ad on TechCrunch. What TLA did was create an ad that uses TC's editor's likeness along with copy that focuses on the TC reader. And some of you might remember our Free Advertising Month this past February.

Another interesting example I found today comes from Tim at eMonetized. He has created a way for his readers to create a massive amount of links and visibility to his site in return for a chance at an advertising slot on John Chow's web site.

So here is how it works:

• Tim purchases an ad on John's web site for $500
• Time puts up the button ad stating that he is running a contest for this slot for "four winners"
• To enter the contest, a reply on Tim's web site is worth one entry, and a link from your web site is worth 5 more entries for a maximum of 6 entries
• Four winners will win ONE day of the ad slot on John's web site. That's right, this little detail is left to the end of the entire contest post. Tim believes this should net the winner 300-400 clicks in the one day. I am not sure I buy those figures.

So let's look at the deal here for Tim and John. Tim walks away with great publicity and countless inbound links to his main page and story page. And a juicy link from John's web site. All this for $500. John gets additional publicity because (at least some) of the contest entrants will link back to John's web site as well. So John picks up $500 in ad revenue and potentially more juicy link juice.  Oh yea, and the contest winners get a day on a mega-site, so everyone wins!

I think it's a great marketing idea. While it can only work so many times, it's at least a great boost for Tim. Do you have other examples of this type of marketing? Please share!

Side note: I did link to Tim's site so I guess I get 5 entries into his contest. If I should win, I will donate the space to one of you, my loyal readers.