The interesting thing about marketing in new media is that it continually evolves. Consider the fact that I wrote previously about the virtues of Second Life. Second Life for those who don’t know about it is the property of Linden Labs. A glimpse into a 3D virtual world, Second Life was widely recognized for the real-world wealth it created. Many companies and individuals alike nestled up close to their computer to create Avatars (virtual representations of themselves) and develop “real property” in the virtual world. Most of this was a marketing ploy to gain notoriety and eyeballs.

Months after the land rush measuring the value of this activity paints the picture of the value of this non-traditional media type - consider this excerpt from TechCrunch:

Wagner James Au at GigaOm has a set of figures worth looking at. In defending Second Life, Au notes that the visitor rate to corporate installations on Second Life is 0.8-2% vs a CTR rate on standard web advertisements on 0.5-1%. Great, but does a higher CTR really matter? The 5 most popular corporate destinations on Second Life have between 1200 to 10,000 visitors per week. An island on Second Life (a popular choice for corporations) costs $1,675 upfront then $295/ month, and that doesn’t include the cost to actually create structures on the island from one of the various Second Life design firms (cost: approx $5-10,000). So lets do the figures: the most popular corporate destination has 10,000 visitors per week; at $295/ mth in maintenance fees that’s a CPM rate of approx $7.40. The bottom destination of the top 5 has a CPM rate of approx $61. If we apportion the upfront costs of design (say $5,000 although it’s probably higher) and setup ($1675) over 12 months the CPM rates become $21.20 (top) and approx $180 (bottom of the top 5). The CTR rate is irrelevant: the CPM cost for businesses on Second Life is insane: simply even for the very best, the figures don’t add up.

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