new sponsored accounts

[low_delta]

Did you hear about the impending new account level? They're testing it in Russia now. It's called Sponsored (not to be confused with the former "Sponsored"). This one is where you choose a sponsor, and they pay for your account. You get all the benefits of having a paid account, and they put their stickers on your car ads on your journal. And they choose your journal style. Staff says that the style will have the sponsor's "subtle banding," but I can only imagine how that will work.

Interesting.

So... if you're paid, you don't see banner ads, but you will see their logo in your background. And so will everyone else (unless you use "?Style=mine"). I imagine this will be very popular. I think most people have some companies that they like, and wouldn't mind seeing their ads in return for the paid bennies. In fact, I picture this cutting down on the number of actual paid accounts. And of revenue from banner ads. I wonder how much cash LJ actually gets from this deal. I can't picture any company paying the price of a paid account for the privilege of running an ad in the background of a blog page. Maybe that's why they're only testing it right now.

Comments

[banana.livejournal.com]

The figures have been hidden for a long time now, but when they were available the number of paid accounts was something like 2%. So I doubt if they're are concerned about losing some of that. Even if they get less money for a "sponsored" account than for a paid account, they'll get large enough numbers of them that they'll make plenty of money. And giving someone the paid account features probably doesn't cost much.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

That's probably true. And explains why they went to ads in the first place.

Sponsored accounts will probably become the default type, and paid will be called "opt out of ads" or "customizable," or something.