LL goes begging for banner ads, again

In an earlier post I talked about yet another piece of fallout from the XStreetSL listing taxes scandal: Banner ads on XStreetSL plummeted like a rock and the Lindens went begging to Solution Providers to fill in the gaps.

It seems that trick didn't work, since the Lindens are now extending a half-price ad offer to all merchants(well, those who still haven't jumped ship yet) for the holidays. Unfortunately, this will suffer the same problem that the SP offer had: What good is a half-off ad offer when the consumers are leaving the ad providers' site in droves? It doesn't matter if it's the holidays, the bottom line is what counts.

The Lindens are obviously trying to at slow the bleeding from XStreetSL, but they're applying relief to the wrong area, and they know it. Until Colossus and Pink publicly acknowledge that they royally screwed over customers and merchants, the result of this second round of begging will remain the same: FAIL.

More XStreetSL Fallout: LL goes begging to Solution Providers for banner ads

In yet another telltale sign of XStreetSL's business losses due to their own greed, Prok dishes the dirt on a "limited time complimentary banner ads" program to Solution Providers. While I don't really care about banner ads on XStreet anyhow(I rarely, if ever, clicked on one anyway), in the comments it's revealed that non-LL banner ads have dropped faster than a rock.

I took a quick look at XStreetSL for old time's sake, and sure enough a LL ad shows up quite often each time I reload or navigate around the marketplace. Before the listing taxes announcement, I would rarely, if ever, see a LL banner ad on XStreetSL.

I'll let the commenter who blew the whistle on the XStreeSL ads sum it up for me:

I would suggest this is a combination of desperation at trying to get some fresh ads up there and the beginning of their push to make xsl work friendly - which is never will be.

Until the Lab comes clean and kills the listing taxes in favor of a more balanced solution, expect things to only get worse for the Commerce team.