Bronte Media

AdAge has a good profile of Gratis Internet, operaters of freeIpods.com (not to mention freecondoms.com), as well as a good overview of the incentive based marketing industry overall. (Go read Jay Weintraub’s great analysis of the industry if you want to find out more about it)

The article, from its mentions of social networks amongst 18-24 year olds, got me thinking that incentive based marketing has turned into derivative of the idea of bulk purchasing, pioneered by Mercata and Paul Allen (anybody remember those guys?). Basically they would aggregate people who wanted to buy a certain product and ask for a bulk discount from the supplier.

Incentive based marketing has turned into a very similar thing but with a twist: you get what you want for signing up you and your friends to perhaps something you don’t really need or don’t care about changing to (credit card, dvd rental).

Capitalism at its finest.

p.s. You gotta love this paragraph opener in the article: “Although sometimes derided as a scam, it’s not”

p.p.s Interesting that they note 2004 revenue. Perhaps that was the watershed year for online incentive based marketing and now it has leveled because most people who want an iPod have an iPod. They may have to wait for another ground-breaking consumer electronics product to get kick-started.