Avatar

Hi, I'm Aaron Richard. You might remember me as that guy from some website who goes by the name "Ralph The Magician."

I live and work in New York City. I design. I code. I like to create things. I like radio, tea, and sailboats.

This is one of my blogs. I use this to showcase some of the things I've worked on that I think others might find particularly interesting. I maintain two other blogs: Blogs by Magic & Rants by Magic.

You can learn more about me, follow me on Twitter, or send me an email.

Posts tagged sponorships

The social advertising experiment

A few years ago I tried to start a company. The name of the startup was Anatomy Ads. You can see the remnants of a functional prototype at anatomyads.com, if you wish. The purpose of this company was to find a new way to monetize new media.

The idea was to create a truly social advertising network around the idea of “variable CPM.” You would pay ‘x’ dollars for an ad, and the number of ‘y’ impressions you would receive would vary based on how many other people were buying into that space, and at what price. If people could enter an ad unit, at whatever price they wanted, what would happen? Would you have hundreds of people offering small increments for hot properties, or a few big players trying to dominate the pool? How would people act if they didn’t know how many impressions they’d end up getting? Would you ever reach the equilibrium price? These were the kinds of questions I wanted to answer.

Read more