blogads for the opinion makers

In early 2002 Henry Copeland started brainstorming a service to connect bloggers and advertisers. Here’s the original Blogads manifesto. The Blogads domain was registered March 5, 2002, and after six months of prototyping and programming, the service launched August 13. Things were quieter than expected. The first ad, for $32, didn’t trickle in until September 2.

Folks in the know “thought Henry was crazy.”

Today Blogads.com connects 1300 blogs with a joyful stew of advertisers ranging from corporate giants to mom&mom T-shirt peddlers. Advertisers include NBC, Audi, PBS, Time Warner, JohnKerry.com, The Republican National Committee, The New Republic, Rhino Records, O’Reilly Media, Bagnews, Paramount Pictures, Random House, Network Solutions, Turner Broadcasting, eChristianWebhosting, Nokia, VH1, and Budget Renta Car.

During the ‘04 election, Blogads ran hundreds of ads for different candidates and causes, more different political ads than any other single online media. Henry “makes blogs possible,” said leading bloggers.

Henry, 46, grew up in Wooster, Ohio and in 1984 received a BA in history from Yale University after nearly failing classes in economics, math and computer science. After working on Wall Street (’84-91) and in Budapest as a journalist (’91-’98), in 1998 Henry founded Pressflex.com, the parent company to Blogads. Pressflex today serves as the webmaster for nearly 100 newspapers and magazines across Europe.

Henry has punditized about blog advertising at events including Blogtalk 1.0 in Vienna, Austria, iBreakfast in New York, NY, Blogon in Berkeley, CA, Gnomedex in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Politics Online in Washington, DC, SXSW in Austin, TX, Ad-Tech in San Francisco, Chicago and NYC, Blognashville, Syndicate in NYC and San Francicso, iHollywood in LA, the AAN’s annual conference in Little Rock, Promax in New York and Search Engine Strategies in Chicago.

Here’s audio from two SXSW panels Henry moderated in 2006, Cluetrain: seven years later and Revenge of the Blogs: politics and election ‘08. And here’s the podcast of Suxorz panel at SXSW ‘08, which former Ad-tech chair Susan Bratton called “the best panel at SXSW ‘08.”

Henry is on the advisory board for SXSW 2009 and serves on the advisory board of George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet. Here’s a video of Henry evangelizing blogs to TV execs at Promax.

And talking with Epic Fu’s Zadi Diaz about social media advertising:

Department of dubious distinctions: Henry was named “most argumentative” in the Wooster High class of ‘80. Henry’s blog is the sixth oldest by an American CEO, according to this list. And Henry is one of Gawker’s New Dorks of All Media.

Henry’s favorite bloggers include welch, langfield, layne, jarvis, bruner, teebee, arellanes, greg.

Favorite business books: The Innovator’s Solution, The Loyalty Effect, Emergence, Sam Walton: Made in America, Fooled by Randomness, Only the Paranoid Survive, Crossing the Chasm, The perfect store: eBay, Moneyball, The Machine that Changed the World, and Linked.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at Jun 11, 08 | 4:16 pm and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.