It's true, the pixel advertising phenomonon seems to have reached almost everywhere in Internet Marketing, but what is it that separates the good pixel sites from the, uh... not so good? There's two things that will increase a pixel site's ability to interest advertisers. The first is traffic, and the second is uniqueness.

Without either of these things, putting your pixel on a pixel site is akin to just sticking up a web page and not telling anybody it's there. The pixel site owners need to promote their pages heavily in order to bring traffic to their site, and thus, your ads. This can have added benefits for everybody: it increases the alexa rank and page ranking of the pixel site which in itself will help to increase the traffic.

A higher page rank for the site that has YOUR link on it, also means better search engine placement for you. Of course, we all want to attract visitors and see lots of "clicks" on our ads, but improving your site's ranking in the search engines will also increase your visitors, so indirectly, pixel advertising can still be a huge benefit even if you don't seem to be getting "clicks" on your actual ads. In effect, traffic promotes more traffic, and having links on sites with higher traffic can eventually lead to more traffic for you too.

But what makes an advertiser choose one high-traffic pixel site over another? They all look the same these days and a lot of pixel publishers aren't really doing much more than the default installation. Not very enticing to an advertiser. Places like Ad on The Moon (http://www.adonthemoon.com) have used novel ideas to generate interest. The Pixelizer (http://thepixelizer.com) has a unique twist offering affiliate and random payments for each new signup. Sites like Pixel Fever (http://pixelfever.us) are backed by other income-generating opportunites. There are a few unique sites offering something more than the ordinary and when combined with high traffic, these are the sites that will fill their grids.

For advertisers: To make the most of your pixel ad placement, there are some things to keep in mind. Don't just enter any old description to use as your "hover" or descriptive text. Make sure your description actually includes the keywords that are important to your site. This will help with search engine placement. If you're considering spending more than just the minimum block amount at a site -- you don't have to place one large ad with only one link. It's beneficial if you have lots of smaller pixels advertising the same link -- creating more backlinks for your site. And they don't have to be next to each other, they could be placed diagonally or with different images or carefully crafted to appear like a continuing image, whilst actually having a number of separate images and separate links.

For publishers: I think pixel advertising is here to stay, but publishers just putting up a site and waiting for visitors will be sorely disappointed. Put some thought into your marketing program and your "theme" and you'll find you'll be able to attract many more paying advertisers.