Here's an instance of eBay being used to sell ad space on the back of a telephone book. Not particularly noteworthy, maybe, but it does remind me of Michael Bassik's great post on Blogads (my post here) in which he suggested letting the market set prices. In the case above (telephone book) the seller went with eBay precisely because he was having trouble determining an appropriate price -- a frustrating circumstance which happens to apply to just about every blogger selling ad space.
Someone recently suggested to me that selling ads on eBay would yield a bunch of pharmaceutical or porn ads. This is possible, but my guess is that auctions would actually bring in ads that were more content-relevant, since these would be likely to have more value to the relevant advertiser, who could therefore bid higher. Also, eBay is the perfect platform for dealing with small-scale and local advertising, since the transaction costs are so tiny.
I'm not going to start advertising on locussolus. But if I had a blog with more focused content (and I've been thinking seriously about getting a group blog about Oak Park started -- let me know if you're interested), I'd put a separate page up detailing the advertising slots available and link from there to an eBay auction for each slot. And if I were the first to do it, I'd probably generate a lot of attention...
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