Dappered

Affordable Men's Style

Art as Ads – Introducing a new Dappered initiative

By | Heads up: Buying via our links may result in us getting a commission. Here's why.

Show your work on Dappered: submissions@dappered.com

Above: Brown Shoes by Ben Madeska. Or, at least one of them.

As a thanks to the vast majority of you who choose to not use extensions like adblock on Dappered, we’re going to start devoting 5-10% of our total ad space to showing art instead of ads.

Ads pay for things. And when things get paid for, websites stay free. And while Dappered has very limited ad space (on purpose, nobody likes a cluttered can’t-find-the-content website), keeping the site as good looking as possible is what we’re aiming for.

And showing art in our ad space every once in awhile? Can’t hurt.

So here’s what we’re looking for:

  • Artists with works that “Fit” Dappered’s overall style.
  • No, this doesn’t mean the subject of the piece has to be clothing related. Just something that might appeal to those of us in the Republic of Dapperedistan.
  • Bacon, for example, works. So would the world’s largest piece of driftwood.
  • Works that can be scaled and/or cropped to 300×250 pixels (the standard box ad space on the right rail)
  • Some patience. We’re a small outfit, so, we’ll get to as many as we can.

In exchange for letting us run works of art on our site, we’ll provide a click-through that goes to the artist’s website, facebook page, twitter feed… whatever. We’ll just need to get that from the artists if their work is approved.

So if you’re an artist, or know one that’s got a piece or two that would fit well on Dappered, send us an email to submissions@dappered.com. Also, be sure to check out the terms and conditions for submission.

Need some guidelines when it comes to image quality for the work of art? Click here for the pdf guide.

Comments

  3. Do you plan on using the art verse ads to create A/B testing to show incrementality of your advertising? it’s exactly what other websites are doing anytime you see an ad for smokey-the-bear.

  8. This post made me realize I still use Adblock on Dappered. It’s disabled now, sorry it took so long.

  9. This is the first time that I have been convinced to add a website to my AdBlock filter. This was a brilliant idea that shows a lot of class.

  12. I am doing the same as well. Never really gave a second thought to letting ad’s through on sites I want to support, but that has changed!

    Here’s to supporting dappered!!

  13. As an artist, I see these contests pop up all over the place. And I’m not opposed to them in general, but I feel that a common term that comes up is that all submissions, even if not chosen, become work-for-hire owned by the host company with no further compensation or acknowledgement. Can you comment on if that is part of this contest and if you’re flexible on that last end?

  14. I don’t think I quite follow. It’s not really a contest, and while I hope other sites might be doing this, I can’t recall stumbling across it anywhere else so I don’t have any previous experience to lean on.

    “even if not chosen, become work-for-hire owned by the host company with no further compensation or acknowledgement to the artist.”

    Can you explain that a little further? Are you concerned that by submitting a work, Dappered would then claim ownership to it?

    We’re not looking to make a cache of images for use later on down the road. We’re basically offering free advertising. Which, isn’t free to us at all.

  18. yup, just turned my Adblock off for this site. I’ve also decided to click them more as well.

    Classy post Dappered!

  19. This is an awesome idea and it will be fun to see what masterpieces make it onto the sidebar. Kudos to you, Joe; and thank you for doing your part to keep ingenuity flowing on the interwebs.