Pixel advertising

This article is about Web advertising. For other uses, see Pixel (disambiguation).

Pixel advertising is a form of display advertising on the web, in which the cost of each advertisement is calculated dependent on the number of pixels it occupies.

Pixel advertising gained popularity in the last quarter of 2005 when British student Alex Tew created a website named The Million Dollar Homepage, and solicited advertisers to buy ad space measured in pixels on the homepage. The price was set at $1 USD per pixel, and there were 1 million pixels of space available.

Many web sites which host pixel ads exist in a variety of compositions. A few newer sites have additional features that allows a larger image to appear when visitors hover the cursor over a small pixel ad, while others allow pixel ads to be bought for a temporary period of time.

There also exist various ‘Do it yourself’ pixel scripts. These scripts made it possible for people with little knowledge or skills to implement a pixel ad system on their website. This has sparked the growth of thousands of pixel websites worldwide.