Limbo has sort of been abandoned by the Catholic church which started the whole concept as a place between heaven and hell. But, Ebay (EBAY) has brought it back with its TV advertising auction program. Originally intended as a way for big advertisers to get the best rates, it was rejected by the large networks. And, no wonder, it would have cut out their sales forces as the mechanism for marketing ad time.
Ebay did announced a network partner, the also-ran women’s programming cable firm Oxygen. The operation is so obscure that the venture almost certainly indicates that the last days of the Ebay project are upon us.
The first marketing beta testers of the program include Home Depot, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard. But, the initial commitment of ad dollars may be as low as $5 million. That might buy an ad in "The Daily Planet", the newspaper where Clark Kent once worked.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
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