I got a note from John Swords about contextual advertising in Second Life.
While the technology appears to be far from perfect, it is nice to see people thinking of creative ways to advertise in virtual spaces, however what will this mean for the community?
When you opt in to Gmail (for example) you are opting into an ad supported environment. When you enter Second Life this is not the case (per se).
I, for one, am very used to ad supported environments and am fully comfortable with things such as Behavioral Targeting, however many are not. I think that Second Life residents will be even more uneasy knowing that their text is being used for dynamic ad insertion at first, but if the sim where the advertising is occurring adds value in the form of entertainment, I think people will learn to be ok with it. Especially if the advertising is relevant.
Tags: contextual advertising, search, second life, gmail, google, adsense, behavioral targeting, dynamic ad insertion, john swords, metaverse, the 3d web