Underscore In Da House

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Eric and Tom on iMediaEric and I dominate iMedia today, with his article on impression discrepancies and mine on the PayPerPost kerfuffle.  Underscore in Da House! Shouldn't be long before the PayPerPosties start writing stuff in response.

Eric gives some good tips on how smaller agencies can get involved in figuring out how to deal with impression reporting discrepancies.  Right now, we're using our agency-side server numbers until we can figure out a way to get 100% of the buys tracking closely enough with publishing-side ad servers.  I think a lot of agencies are doing the same.  What's perplexing to me is that if the counting methodologies are the same, what's the biggest driver behind the differences in impression totals?  I've heard all sorts of implausible theories over the years - spiders and robots (doubtful - both servers should be filtering out the IAB's list), people who double-click instead of single-clicking on ads (still doubtful, the numbers are too far off), bailouts in between calls between publisher and agency servers (10 percent in that few milliseconds?  I doubt it.) and all sorts of other stuff.

Second Life Recreates Atlas Shrugged

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Seems everyone is reporting the shuttering of businesses within Second Life as something called CopyBot is unleashed within the virtual realm. Seems people involved with an official project of SL that reverse-engineers the code decided there was a need to be able to replicate objects at no cost. Needless to say, people with virtual businesses quickly realized the threat to profit motive and started shutting down.

The economic dynamic of SL fascinates me, and I'm wondering why I haven't yet heard about any of the following yet:

  • The IRS claiming jurisdiction and setting up line items on 1040 forms for "virtual income."
  • Money-laundering schemes.
  • RL articles about how a significant volume of transactions in Linden Dollars or any other virtual currency can muck with the money supply.
  • Drug dealing, with dealers meeting clients in SL and conducting transactions in Linden Dollars or setting up RL drop points.

As SL grows, it makes me wonder how many aspects of the hidden economy within the U.S. and other countries will infiltrate SL. It also makes me wonder about whether state, local or federal governments will try to collect tax revenue. Furthermore, will financial whiz kids take advantage of relatively unregulated markets to launch scams that are strict no-nos IRL, but unaddressed in SL? Shit, who's going to be the first to launch a derivatives market, insurance or pump and dump scam in SL?

Hanging in Crayonville

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I was playing around in Second Life again for a bit on Saturday morning. I flew over to Crayonville, not expecting to find anyone there. (Who the hell hangs out at a marketing agency at 8 AM on a Saturday morning?) As I was walking around Jaffe's digs, I was practicing all the little skills I learned in the tutorial. I sat down in some of the chairs, got myself a Crayon T-shirt, played the piano a bit. I was about to steal a cup of joe from the coffee machine when I noticed another avatar outside the building. Turned out it was a guy from a marketing company in Russia, so we sat down and chatted for a while. (My first SL chat - unless you count telling the creeps to get away from me during my brief stint with my female avatar.) We were talking for a bit when we were approached by someone who worked for an adult entertainment company. We chatted for a bit and then Real Life called, so I had to bail.

Speaking of Jaffe, he played my PayPerPost interview from Ad Tech in its entirety on Across The Sound this week, making PayPerPost his "loser of the week." Funny.