A trio of college students in Miami are banking on the magic of the Web to earn them some much-needed school cash and, along the way, do further harm to the U.S. newspaper industry. Following up on a
clever experiment last year by a British student, the Florida group has launched ownonlinerealestate.com, which sells what is called pixel advertising -- that is, online ads, sold in small sizes, that
appear on a U.S. map directly over the area where they hope to do business. In this case, the Miami students are inviting people to post real estate ads on their site, paying for the number of ads
posted times the dimensions of each. Some Internet enthusiasts believe it could work if the websites have "good design, a niche and good traffic," says Bindea Marius, who runs PixelAdsTalk.com, an
online forum with 581 members. Less enthusiastic voices have weighed in as well. "I don't put much stock in it," says Cliff Kurtzman, who runs the Online Advertising Discussion Forum. "I don't think
it has legs." Too soon to know for sure, but from the POV of the newspaper industry, this is one experiment that bears watching and, possibly, emulating if it shows any promise as an ad-generating
model.
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