Yahoo! News Story - Rent this space: Bodies double as billboards

March 5, 2005

Boyle (boylem@...) has sent you a news article. (Email address has not been verified.)

Personal message:

OT - message is just a follow up on a question regarding where this advertising was conducted.

Rent this space: Bodies double as billboards

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050303/en_usatoday/rentthisspacebodiesdoubleasbillboards

Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail Sign InNew User? Sign Up

News Home - Help

Personalize News Home Page

Yahoo! News

Sat, Mar 05, 2005

Search

All News Yahoo! News Only News Photos Audio/Video for

Advanced

News Home

Most Popular

Weather

Audio/Video

Full Coverage

Full Coverage More about Advertising Marketing

Related News StoriesNew Browsers, Same Unwanted Ads at Wired News (Mar 1, 2005)

Another Marketing Barrier Falls at The New York Times (reg. req'd) (Mar 1, 2005)

Firm eyes RSS feeds as ad vehicle at CNET.com (Feb 28, 2005)

Opinion EditorialsWhat's With That Overstock.com Ad? at Slate (Feb 28, 2005)

What the Net taught TV at Maclean's (Feb 23, 2005)

Feature ArticlesHow Marketing Drives the Pharmaceutical Industry at San Francisco Chronicle (Mar 3, 2005)

Blogs Keep Internet Customers Coming Back at The Wall Street Journal (Feb 28, 2005)

Related Web SitesNational Do Not Call Registry

Brands in an Age of Anti-Americanism

Ad Council

News Resources

Providers

·

Reuters

·

AP

·

AFP

·

E! Online

·

USATODAY.com

·

ET on Yahoo!

·

CP

·

Photos

·

AFP Features

Services

·News Alerts

Charlie Split

News via RSS Entertainment News Entertainment Movies Music Industry TV Reviews More Entertainment | All Feeds

Entertainment - USATODAY.com

Rent this space: Bodies double as billboards

Thu Mar 3, 6:30 AM ET

Entertainment - USATODAY.com

By Puente, USA TODAY

Pay attention, Madison Avenue: Lots of pregnant bellies are being bared on the auction block these days. Same goes for bare backs, breasts, chests and bottoms. Foreheads and forearms are for sale. Big noses are getting their close-ups. Bald heads are going begging.

Gagged Leno has surrogate handle his jokes

Martha arrives home, with media horde

Bush won four months ago, but the campaign goes on

jury sees video of accuser's family praising pop star

Five movies to nosh on

Search USATODAY.com

Snapshots

USA TODAY Snapshot

Will a pooch make you get off the couch?

More USA TODAY Snapshots

It's the latest eBay weirdness: people auctioning their body parts as advertising space.

It used to be only drunken college kids would agree to wear beer or food logos during spring-break beach bacchanalia. But now the Internet has sent this small-scale advertising strategy worldwide.

The theory is that advertisers, tired of paying millions for billboards, magazine ads and Super Bowl commercials, might be willing to spend $10,000 to, say, slap a logo on Barbara 's 38D cleavage. The Las Vegas woman says people always are looking at her breasts, anyway, so why not get paid for it?

Bald guys are asking $20,000. "I'm more of a bargain, and I look better than a bald head," she jokes.

Body-part auctions multiplied on eBay beginning in January after Fischer, 20, of Omaha, auctioned his forehead for 30 days to SnoreStop. Fischer got $37,375; Snore Stop got millions in free publicity. (Related video: Womb for rent)

After that, scores of eBayers rushed to their computers to auction their own body parts. Most offer to wear an ad for a specified period as they go about their daily business. "But the law of supply and demand is always in effect. If you've got 50 of the same thing (being auctioned), it's not going to drive the same attention," says eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.

Some eBayers do it for fun; others want to make extra money. "What the heck, I'm out of work right now," says Jerry Toth, 36, an aircraft mechanic in Barberton, Ohio, who failed to get any bids when he sought $5,000 for his forehead.

Some ad trackers say all this is exploitive and perverse. "The advertiser is getting damaged goods because people who sell body parts for ad space are entirely too freakish by definition to transmit a positive message for the advertising," says Bob Garfield, a columnist for Advertising Age. "No one serious would pursue this."

But GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, paid eight-months-pregnant Elise Harp of Roswell, Ga., $8,800 to temporarily tattoo its Web address on her belly.

"Pregnant bellies are perfect for baby companies," says Ed Vallejo, co-owner of Belly Up Advertising, which helps connect advertisers with available body parts. Several such companies have popped up just in the past two months.

Meanwhile, Fischer, the original forehead, is talking with other advertisers about selling his space in future months. And SnoreStop CEO Christian de Rivel is ecstatic over the response to Fischer's forehead: Web sales of SnoreStop quintupled; retail sales jumped 50%.

"It's the best money I ever spent."

Story Tools

Email Story

Post/Read Msgs

Print Story

Ratings:

Would you recommend this story?

Not at all

1

- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

Highly

Sign In

Yahoo! News Story - Rent this space: Bodies double as billboards

Recommended Posts

Guest guest

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation

Activity