Cheltenham House competition relaunches for third time as Pixahome

Unfortunately, the competition lost momentum and the couple only succeeded in selling just over 5,700 tickets, versus the 49,000 they had initially targeted to give away their underground home. The winner of that competition, Christine Evelen, was therefore handed a cash prize of £83,000 in April based on ticket sales, after administrative and marketing expenses were deducted from the prize fund. A donation of £14,500 was also awarded to Teenage Cancer Trust.

Just a couple of months later, the Bawtrees are back with a new competition to give away the same property, Pixahome. It is loosely based around Alex Tew's 2005 Million Dollar Homepage concept, which saw the student reportedly sell $1 million of pixel ads on the homepage of his website to help finance his studies. To enter, players are simply required to follow the Bawtrees' Pixahome profile on Twitter. The Bawtrees are hoping that they can capitalise on the current buzz surrounding Twitter by selling up to 10,000 pixel ads on their homepage at £200 each. If they sell less than 95% of the pixel ads on the grid, a cash prize fund will be handed to the winner instead.

While this may seem simple in principle, due to the sheer amount of pixel ads on-screen, each one offers advertisers limited visibility on a page that will by definition feature a large number of outbound links. In order to make it cost-effective for advertisers, the concept depends on achieving a very high traffic for the website. Even then, it is difficult to foresee how fast pixel ads could be sold - and how many advertisers will take up the offer.

That being said, it is an interesting twist on house competitions and we wish the Bawtrees success in their new win a house competition!