Ideas

Just for some elaboration, I decided to post a short FAQ listing some common concerns:

Q: How can you know the viewer's region from an ad?
A: I'm not a seasoned programmer, but I've seen it done and I believe they use the location of your IP to determine where you are.

Q: People are more inclined to click if it's somebody from their own region, which means that regional people should be given priority. How do you not discriminate against non-regional ad posters?
A: Regional-only posters will be given a small priority, so it balances good marketing with the non-regional feature. There is a 50% chance viewers will be shown local people, and a 50% chance they are shown non-regional people, so the two types are given equal views, but the regional ads enjoy statistically higher click rates, local people, and better chances their ads are shown more often in a shorter period of time (because your ad competes with fewer other ads), so they will pay a little more.

Q: What would be in a banner ad?
A: A small logo for the site, their picture, their name (or screenname), their description, general location, and possibly some interests.

Q: Would there be different types of ads?
A: The singular ad would be the main type, but if only a name, location, and picture were shown for cheaper ads, it could be possible to fit 4+ cheaper posters at once, or possibly 2 at a time with very short descriptions.... Possibly one local, one not local. Note that this could be a way to take it, but my idea was written mainly for singular posters that take up the whole ad.

Q: You can't just post the ads automatically because they may contain inappropriate material which could be a catastrophe waiting to happen with sites displaying your ads. How would you fix this?
A: ALL ads will have to be reviewed for content when their order is processed. They have to be processed by people anyways, so it wouldn't take long to review the ads upon processing. Sites displaying the ads will also have to sign a disclaimer that states that the company is not responsible for damages done in the unlikely event that inappropriate material is displayed in an ad due to an employee mistake or sabotage.

Q: What will the actual site be like for people browsing other people?
A: The site will have a fairly simple profile display with some basic browsing options. Although the main site is about ad banner personals, it is important that the site functions in-site as a social networking website as well.

Q: What main advantages does this have over current social networking sites?
1. It gives you the opportunity to meet an enormously wide variety of people, including those not specifically looking for personals on a specific website like other companies.
2. It is completely free to ad viewers. No annoying fees to browse singles.
3. Instead of just being an ad for the website, it actually puts small pieces of the website's content all over the web, which makes viewers perceive a less commercial, more trustworthy website.

Q: What will people need in order to contact an ad poster?
A: The first message is done through the site to protect the poster's e-mail address, and the replier will need to supply a verification code and their e-mail. The ad poster then receives these messages in their inbox, and can choose who to reply to.

Q: Having their big mug posted up for the world to see and possibly criticize isn't for everyone, can you just place a plain text ad?
A: There could be support for plain text ads, though they should probably actually cost more because they might hurt marketing. They could, however, just be displayed as a different type of ad on different websites as the photo ads, so it doesn't descriminate against the shy and privacy-loving but also allows the more attractive ads to be displayed on bigger websites. That path could allow plain text ads to be cheaper.

If I think of more concerns, I'll post some more.

Oh my...

I just keep picturing my mom looking at me online...

I would not do a single person per ad because I think it would be too expensive???? But I may do it more analogous to an auction off of pixels in the banner (like million dollar homepage).

> I would not do a single person per ad because I think it would be too expensive????

They wouldn't own the ad all to themselves, it is part of a queue of many ads and all of the ads (viewed at different times) combined should be more than enough to support the ad space and make a decent profit.

I think lava life is starting to do this - or thinking about it anyways. When you sign up they ask if they can use your photo in ads and if you want to be promoted, kinda like a sponsored link in Google. I think people will totally use it.

Well, it¡s not a bad idea! I will invest on it if possible