A friend of mine has just put the space for his MSN Display Picture up for sale on eBay.
He is selling the space for the rest of 2006 and the highest bidder will be able to place an ad in the space. You will reach his 50 MSN friends on a daily basis. As he puts it in the auction:
This is a new and great opportunity for one-to-one marketing !
I have over 50 active friends in my msn and I actively talk to many of them each day ! My friends are in the typical generation X segment and might be hard to reach with traditional channels. Another thing with my friends is that thay are highly educated and have a high income.
Okay, he is selling a private piece of ad space. But, is he selling his friends? Should I be angry as one of those 50 persons that will be the target for this ad?
…I don’t think so, but the idea and the auction is interesting and I will for sure see how this turns out.
Link to the auction: “My Display Picture” in MSN is for sale!
Update:
And this is how it looks like on my computer when Mykle logs on right now. If you buy this ad space you will have your logo exposed on 50 computers each time Mykle logs on…
eirikso 
This is a brilliant idea.
I don’t use Windows Messenger, but rather connect to my friends on the Messenger network with the program Gaim. I don’t see any of the advertising actually inside Messenger, but I do see my friends’ display pictures.
Which means, if you want to reach me with advertising through IM, this is actually the only way to do it…
A good idea, that’s for sure!
But I would actually like to ask you about some other issue; where did you get the hand of Windows Live Messenger? Care to let me know where? Thanks!
Windows Live Messenger is in beta, but by invitation only. I got an invite from a friend… 🙂
No longer invite only.
http://www.itavisen.no/php/art.php?id=296818
Cool. Download the english version here:
http://g.msn.com/1csbeta/Mess80_EN
[…] Sesam.no just got some cheap ad-space My friend Mykle just sold his MSN Display Picture for $122,50. The lucky winner of the auction on eBay was Norwegian serach engine Sesam.no […]