I read an interesting article yesterday on Mediapost’s Marketing Daily: 8 Of 10 Americans Know About Blogs; Half Visit Them Regularly. This is a publication read by marketers, both traditional and online, across all industries. And it reminded me, again, that this is a topic I’ve been meaning to blog about.
Okay, my headline above may be a bit sensational, and maybe not a prediction the article makes per se. But read between the lines, people. Sure, ads are already blaring at you everywhere on major blogs like Tech Crunch, Read/Write Web, and GigaOm, but they’re really big media properties now. I’m talking long-tail blogs. Here’s an excerpt from the article (by the way, Mediapost, I love you, but how about starting to put *links* within your stories? like to more details about the study itself?):
Ad spending on blogs is still in its infancy … the eNation study, conducted in late July, shows there is real potential for ads on blogs. Among people who have visited a blog (485), 43.2% said they have noticed ads on blogs, and three out of 10 people in this group said they have clicked on ads while visiting a blog. Among the youngest consumers, a whopping 61.2% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they have noticed ads on blogs.
Some advertisers are trying to slip brand names in through the blogosphere’s back door by recruiting bloggers to write favorably about their brands…
That latter point is something I wanted to focus on today. It speaks to a major trend to watch in how advertising will be spreading onto blogs: that is, “sponsored content” versus traditional ad banners or text-link ads. The former seems to be coming on strong, on multiple fronts. Sponsored content can be whole stories written in news or editorial style and placed on blogs (or social networks, for that matter) — much the same as many “mat services” have done for decades as a service for small, weekly newspapers (which you know if you’re in the PR business) — to a blogger’s own writing that is directly influenced by and paid for by a sponsor (and hopefully disclosed by the blogger!), to even paragraphs written by a sponsor and paid for and just dropped in by the blogger, with blogger editing even allowed (yes, it’s being pitched out there — I know). There are many creative ways that “advertising” will be infiltrating and propating on blogs. So, hold on for the ride….
What do you think? Which kind of advertising would you rather see on blogs? (Relevant ads, of course — that’s a given.) Or how about on this blog right here?
For that matter, should I even be accepting advertising at all, in whatever form?
UPDATE: And for more on the growing readership of blogs: Blogs Make Tech Impact: 78% of Tech Journalists Read Them.
2nd UPDATE, 9/4/07: And yet more: One-third of blog visitors have clicked a blog ad, study says.
Good point, Graeme. A lot needs to come together to make this really work. First, bloggers need to build audiences that interest advertisers. Then bloggers need to sell ads against the audience they’ve built. Most are stuck on step one or have no idea how to (or interest) in step 2.
Federated Media and their associated advertising sites pretty much got their t*t in a wringer earlier this year over paid content/endorsements. It’s a tricky thing. The only thing most bloggers have is their credibility. If their audience senses they are hawking something and not being true to their mission/soul I think they’ll have a big problem. I don’t think most readers mind unobtrusive, passive blog advertising (Google) but the minute it trends toward active through content it could be a different matter.