Entrecard Has Beef with Exploitative Marketing

I received an e-mail from Entrecard this week notifying me that they have changed my avatar.

Greetings, Your avatar has been changed. We are implementing a rule against “exploitative marketing” which includes using an avatar of scantily clad females when your site has nothing to do with scantily clad females.

The recent surge in avatars of scantily clad females is devaluing our network and we are taking action against it. Thank you for understanding.

To be honest, I think I started this trend. I created a 125×125 ad with a super model and the words “Money Making Scoop” around it as shown to the left. Within a few hours, there were a couple more super model avatars popping up and even more the next day. See what happens when other site owners can’t think for themselves and have to copy my genius idea? Thanks for ruining it guys! 👿

The cool thing about my avatar though… my Entrecard traffic tripled almost immediately after I put it up. I also got a record amount of advertisers waiting to place their ad on my blog. For the first time ever, my ad queue was full. So apparently sex does sell.

I put up another tricky avatar without using a female’s image, but this time made it appear to be an embedded QuickTime movie. The funny part is that it’s almost doing as well as the super model avatar. And from what I hear, people can familiarize themselves with the crazy dude surrounded by cash as being a symbol for MoneyMakingScoop.com. Branding is everything, you know.

I completely understand the point of view Entrecard is coming from. They had to curb the types of avatars in their network – it was looking more like a dating site than a blogger’s advertising exchange.

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