A serial Bitcoin entrepreneur, “Andrew Bitcoiner,” contacted Betabeat over the weekend to announce the debut of BitcoinAdvertisers.com, an online advertising network where business is done in the decentralized e-currency Bitcoin. Sign up, name a price, name the number of clicks in the campaign, and write the text for your ad, and BitcoinAdvertisers will charge you in Bitcoins to display your ad on sites in its network. As a publisher, merely type in your Bitcoin address and grab the generated code to place an ad spot on your site. BitcoinAdvertisers charges advertisers a 1 percent fee.
“There are two other bitcoin ad serving services out there, AnonymousAds and Operation Fabulous, but both in my opinion do not meet the needs of what typical advertisers want,” wrote the Bitcoin entrepreneur, who declined to give his real name but said he is an IT manager for a major web service in San Francisco and the owner of “about” 12 Bitcoin businesses, with “several more in the planning phase.” The roadmap for the BitcoinAdvertisers includes automatic translation into a user’s preferred language and multiple sizes for banner ads, he said.
“I feel that BitcoinAdvertisers.com is the first service to give web publishers exactly what they need to start making bitcoins and serve the bitcoin business community desire to raise revenue with the business model proven to work by Google with Adsense,” he said in an email.
He considered calling the site “BitcoinSense,” but some advertisers raised copyright concerns.
Many of the transactions will likely be between Bitcoin-themed businesses advertising on each others’ sites. Luckily, that’s how economies work. Like hamster wheels.
There are a few existing industries that have taken a liking to Bitcoin because it makes it easy for customers to pay semi-anonymously: the illegal drug market and the porn industry. Prospective users are already requesting that BitcoinAdvertisers keep the sex ads separate. In the next week, BitcoinAdvertisers will add categories “to limit adult themed ads into appropriate channels.” The unaffiliated ad network SexyBitcoinAds, supposedly launching this week as well, may take a bite out of that business anyway.