Alex Tew made pixel advertising famous with his hugely popular Million Dollar Homepage. Since then there have been many imitators including Tew himself. His subsequent project, Pixel Lotto failed along with possibly hundreds of other clones seeking to cash in on his successful ideas. However, among these clones comes Steal the Pixels with one cool addition – stealing advertising blocks from other publishers.
In case you’re not familiar with pixel advertising, the premise is simple. You buy small blocks of advertising a pixel (or in this case 10×10) at a time. You can purchase different size and shape advertisements, and then change the color of each pixel to advertise your brand. A clickable link can be inserted to link your block of pixels to a website of your choosing.
Steal the Pixels is pretty much trying to reinvent the wheel by making another famous pixel advertising website. One of the most notable difference is the ability to steal blocks of advertising from other users. An offer of as little as 10 cents more than what the original purchaser paid for their block will allow you to put your image and link on that block – until someone steals that block from you at least.
Instead of selling each pixel for $1, there will be blocks of 10×10 for sale which will allow for bigger advertisements. Another cool feature coming in the future is allowing you to hover over different pixels to display an even larger clickable advertisement. For example, hovering over someone’s purchase of 20×20 blocks could reveal a 250px by 250x advertisement for the block owner.
The differences listed above separates this new pixel advertising with all of the other clones that have been setup over the last few years. Along with all the new features, I spoke with the owner of Steal the Pixels and he assured me the site will be heavily promoted in order to obtain page rank and popularity.