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Food for the soul
Geraldine Hartman, author of Not Just for Vegetarians, Delicious Homestyle Cooking, the Meatless Way, writes:
As an author, my experience with Blogads.com has been wonderful. Excellent customer service (especially follow-up) is often hard to find these days; it is alive and well at Blogads.com. Thanks to Lanae and everyone at Blogads for making my first experience such a positive one, placing ads on some of the great food blogs that they represent. Cheers from Canada!
Testimonial redux
At the risk of recursiveness, I'll quote something Blogad buyer Craig Peters posted on his own blog after we added his testimonial to the Blogads site:
Henry Copeland and crew have a good thing going over there: a great service, coupled with great customer service. My only complaint is that there isn’t a much larger selection of blogs to choose from.I've got a few other complaints of my own, but that's definitely one. Thank you again Craig.
Buying more
One of the great joys of organizing Blogads.com is that I get to talk with some of America's coolest writers and advertisers. Earlier this week, I got a call from Chug Roberts, who runs a specialist publisher focusing on legislative processes called TheCapitol.net. The firm has been buying blogads over the last twelve months and Chug wanted some feedback on their ads and to share some ideas about improving Blogads.com.
Chug also said a bunch of nice things about Blogads, and after we hung up, he put some of his praise in writing:
"Having experimented with Blogads last year, we've devoted a much-increased portion of our marketing budget to your service this year. Blogads is a great service, simple to use and control. For a niche publisher like our company, Blogads has been a fantastic resource for reaching potential customers we couldn't otherwise hit at affordable prices. I talk Blogads up whenever I can."Thank you Chug! I'll be putting your testimonial up on our front page later this month.
Coverage of blog advertising
Danny Glover gives a great overview of the revolution in advocacy advertising spawned by blogs in the National Journal. The lede says it all: "Advocacy is a staple of the blogosphere, and advocacy advertising on blogs is quickly becoming a popular tool for groups hoping to mobilize the online masses."
I should also mention that Farah Miller, who has bought a number of blogads for books including Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint and Camille Paglia's Break Blow Burn, was the star of an article in Friday's WSJ about new ideas in book marketing.
Book publishers generally stick to their tried-and-true formula for promoting a new novel: send the writer on tour, slip review copies to critics and negotiate strategic displays in bookstores. The Internet has been used to create barebones Web sites tied to new books, and the occasional advertising campaign on popular online destinations, but little more. Now, publishers like Knopf are hoping to supplement their traditional campaigns by wooing bloggers, giving away free copies online, and other initiatives.You can see the full article here.
Clark: blogads are 'my favorite buzz seeding tool'
Brian Clark, the philosopher king of blog advertising and maestro behind the Sharp, Audi and Levi's blogads campaigns, has finally stepped from behind the curtain to talk about his strategies.
My favorite "buzz seeding" tool currently is the amazing network over at BlogAds.com in part because of the interesting things you can do when you leave the IAB standards behind...I'm relieved to see Brian write this, because he's been threatening to dis us to scare other creative advertisers away from his favorite fishing hole.
100 smart customers like this and someday we'll buy the Eiffel tower
Brian Clark, who orchestrated last fall's purchase for Sharp TV and has a shockingly fun order up his sleeve:
Blog ads (in the generic sense, and especially BlogAds in the particular sense) are... bringing ads into the conversation. If they are done right, they out-perform traditional creative placements by so much it makes my clients nervous for me to talk about particulars.
Crafting a recipe for blogad success
Toby Bloomberg, Atlanta's leading blog evangelist, has been working with one of her clients to test Blogads. The small test wasn't a raging success. Toby has blogged the experience, and I've added some thoughts in her comments. I'll repeat them here to have a copy secure for my own reference:
In a subsequent test, I'd love to see the creative engage more directly with the sensibilities of targetted blog(s).
As Toby noted, the best clicks came from www.TowleRoad.com, where the ad creative gave a nod to the blog's gay readership. Next time, let's nod harder...or wink or nudge or cajole! (Here's that creative:
The creative for the other blogs could have run anywhere on the Internet. Here it is:
As Toby, Donna and I discussed before the ads ran, what makes each blog unique is its personality; blogads do best when they engage blog personalities. Great blogs inspire strong group identities. These groups see the world through a certain set of eyeglasses. They speak in certain codes and fixate on certain issues.
So ads ideally show the advertiser (and the product buyer) to be one of "us" rather than one of "them." Show some friendliness towards a blog's sensibilies and two good things can happen. Readers click AND clickers have positive disposition as they engage your offer.
Here's a thought experiment that pushes this strategy to its logical (and profitable?) extreme.
Every marketer dreams of having a product that appeals to everyone; but most of us would be very happy to sell to 20% of a given marketplace. Consider, for example, Volvo, which sells roughly 100,000 cars a year in the US. What if, rather than simply observing that Volvo drivers tend to be Democrats (65/35), Volvo sought to align itself as THE itself Democratic light vehicle of choice by running ads exclusively in Democratic venues and discounting Volvos to key Democrats?
If a Volvo became an identity badge for Democrats, Volvo might lose 35,000 yearly sales to Republicans, but how many sales, out of the total US sales of 17 million a year, might be gained?
Of course, this is untenable for two reasons. Volvo is owned by Ford and Ford seeks to appeal to Republicans too. And Ford Inc has Republican shareholders.
But what an established, publicly traded company like Ford can't do, a privately owned upstart with a clean-slate brand CAN.
Consider the success of Ben & Jerry's. Heck, if frozen milk can tap into a political sensibility to grow a brand, anything can. Ben and Jerry were happy to forgo ambitions for a certain large market segment, the apolitical ice-cream consumers they could never realistically win anyway, to absolutely own another segment that was reachable.
So let's bring this back to Gourmet Station. I'd love to see a package of ads that appeal very strongly to a particular sensibility and run on key blogs. Gun-rights activists? Girl-scout troop leaders? Bush-detractors? For Gourmet Station, what sensibility is the analog to the eco-liberals Ben & Jerry won over?
Therein may lie a gourmet recipe not only for a great blogad campaign, but for long-term company growth.
Bassik: Long live the Blogad
Michael Bassik of Malchow Schlackman Hoppey & Cooper writes a very kind review of blogads , including some feature requests. My wife, who also thought I was crazy during Blogads' first 18 months, got a chuckle out of Michael's lede:
At the March 2004 Politics Online conference at George Washington’s Institute of Politics, Democracy, and the Internet, Henry Copeland from Blogads posed a question to the panel on Internet advertising: “Have you considered placing ads on blogs?” I was on that panel, along with Cliff Sloan from The Washington Post, Nick Nyhan from DynamicLogic, and Charles Buchwalter from Nielsen//NetRatings.
All of us on the panel had heard of blogs, perhaps even visited one or two before. But who would actually pay money to place a tiny tile banner alongside of someone’s random thoughts? We all thought Henry was crazy, along with everyone who agreed with him.
Nice Testimonial
Just got this e-mail.
Subject: here's my 2 cents
Body: Blogads kick a**. They reach an informed, connected audience without parallel in the advertising universe.
Michael Addicott, CEO
CognitiveLabs.com
Blogads Misc
Mike Madden of Gannett looked at politico Blogads and found another success story: "We made back our investment within the first hour of putting them up," said Dan Pfeiffer, a strategist for Daschle's campaign.
In Mediapost, Kate Kaye does a great excavation into the nitty-gritty of the Blogad campaign for Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.
And as Dan Gillmor, technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and author of the visionary book on grassroots journalism called "We the Media," writes a column about Google's potential problems, he mentions Microsoft, Yahoo and, gulp, "a small company called Blogads" as examples of threats to Google's share price (today $110.) Thank you Dan... or maybe not, since I sense the cruel gods of fate and finance frowning (and squinting) in our direction even now.
NYTimes: read convention blogs to find Mencken's ghost
A remarkable editorial in today's New York Times advises readers to log on to blogs to get the scoop on the upcoming Democratic convention. See for yourself. Astonishingly candid. (Via Jeff Jarvis.) Before it disappears into the Times' archives, I'll copy a chunk for the scrapbook:
People who think the mushrooming world of wannabe polemicists and their Web logs, or blogs, is merely a high-tech amusement should talk to Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican.Want to advertise on some of the convention blogs? You can advertise for the week on fifteen of the biggest for $1290. Here's a package for your convenience. (If you know of any convention-going blogads sellers I've missed, please let me know and I'll amend.) Update: here's a completish list of all bloggers at the convention: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001461.php
In Web lore, bloggers are credited with relentlessly drilling Senator Lott after he expressed segregation-tinged nostalgia for the Strom Thurmond presidential campaign, a story that the major news media initially missed. Mr. Lott was subsequently forced to quit as majority leader.
Beyond its power as a source of news and commentary, the Internet has proved itself to be the ultimate fund-raising tool. Bloggers can be crass and biased, but politicians no longer scoff at their rich online realm. Hence the red carpet at the conventions — at least for some of them.
The Democrats, needless to say, are already paying for their venturesome invitation. They received applications from 50 bloggers and later announced there was room for only 30. Conspiracy theories are already abounding on the blogs of the disinvited. Such is Web life. We do wonder whether a blogger's buccaneer self-image will suffer from having to wear a garish credential necklace just to watch conventioneers as they mainly say, "Nice to see you!" to each other. Will bloggers be tamed into centrism? Or, like Mencken, will they gleefully report that the convention's main speechmakers are "plainly on furlough from some home for extinct volcanoes"? Log on to find out.
Hespos: Yes, Blogs Are A Great Advertising Environment
Online advertising guru Tom Hespos has tasted blogs and now wants a whole meal.
Advertiser: blog ads blew the conventional media out of the water
Jeff Jarvis exchanges e-mails with Jeff Sharlet, the editor of a new site called The Revealor, about the efficacy of the site's recent advertising campaign. The low down:
The Revealer spent $7 k on advertising in the last month or so (most of our budget). We decided to divide it, roughly, between conventional online media and blog ads. Blog ads blew the conventional media out of the water.Talking Points, Little Green Footballs, DailyKos, Matthew Yglesias, Hit & Run, Washington Monthly and Donald Sensing all generated multiple times more traffic than 'conventional media.'
And all are for sale right here.
Open source ad campaign
Film-maker Brian Flemming bought a Blogad on Talkingpointsmemo promoting a book called "Sue Me," which is intended to shame Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's posted the results of the ad campaign so far -- lots of clicks and some of that juicy stuff that PR professionals crave: "earned media." Any revenues from the book campaign will be plowed right back into more advertising.
Actforlove.org loves blogads
This morning's inbox brings a raging testimonial from John Hlinko, founder of ActforLove.org, a personals site for activists, and also creator of DraftWesleyClark.com, which led the charge to get Wesley Clark into the presidential race.
We've advertised online before, but when we started using blogads -- our traffic literally tripled overnight. Normal banner ads let you reach a mass audience, but blogads put you in front of Net 'influentials' -- the people who love to dig deep into a subject, and tell others all about it. With blogads you don't just get click-throughs, you create evangelists. The blogads for ActForLove.org not only got massive click-throughs, the bloggers themselves started talking about ActForLove.org on those same blogs -- and on a number of others throughout the Web. You simply can't get that kind of 'amplification' benefit with normal banner ads.Mediapost magazine included Blogads in its roundup of new trends in online advertising.
Blog advertising ROI
Stephen Bach, creator of the Dude where's my weapons? tee shirts, recounts his experience buying blogads on Talkingpointsmemo. Among other things, Steve writes:
The ad went live at the end of March, and within a few hours, not only were we getting hits, we were receiving actual on-line orders! The entire ad was a direct link to our site. Simply by clicking anywhere on the image or copy, the reader is immediately directed to http://www.dudewheres.com By logging into blogads.com, we are able to track the number of page views, AND the number of “clicks” (the number of readers who click on the link to our site.) In one week, over 650,000 people saw our add, and over 6,600 visited the site (about a 1% “click-through”). Out of that 6,600, we sold to 2% in one week, all for a $300 investment.
Political blogads: fad or phenom?
Charles Kuffner has some answers from campaign staffers.
Meanwhile, the pilot fish of political blogads -- the t-shirt seller -- is still thriving. I got this message the other day from Stephen Bach, who is selling piles of Dude, where's my weapons? T-shirts thanks to his blogad on Talkingpointsmemo: "The response has been incredible! P.S. I Googled 'Dude Where's My Weapons' and found my t-shirt picture on two other political blogs, WITH a link to my site. Viral marketing is a wonderful thing!"
BTW, for all you folks who think that bigger is better in web-design -- the simple landing page for Stephen's ad (the page you see after you click) is a great example of how to do things right:
-- we get punched in the face with Stephen's offer: 90% of the visual communication is about his product.
-- an unadorned design keeps the visitor focused on doing just one thing: acting. Think of the landing page as a bull's eye that has just one logical outcome, not as a supermarket that promotes 57 distractions.
-- the page should look neat and professional, but not too nice. An occassional rough edge emphasizes the human beings behind the HTML and lets customers know that their money is being spent on better products and not cutting edge web design.
A bullseye landing page can make the difference between just recouping your ad spend and making a five or ten-fold return.
Dealing with various blog advertiers, I've seen that these lessons apply whether you are selling t-shirts, fund raising for candidates or enlisting partisans for a cause.
Of course, some very fancy designs can work well too, but the risk/reward definitely suggests that money spent on design frills won't increase your returns.
To put it another way, if you've got $4000 to spend on "blog advertising," you should spend $500 on designing five good ad images, $600 writing good copy for the landing page, $100 designing a landing page and $2700 on ad space on blogs. (You can save on the landing page copy by cannibalizing some of your direct mail copy.)
Update: Later in the day, I called up Bach. Turns out he's been doing marketing for 20 years. Rather than beginner's luck, his brutally simple landing page is a tested and refined customer catcher.
Wolcott: blogs the best thing to hit journalism since...
James Wolcott in April's Vanity Fair:
"Don't dismiss blogs as the online rantings of B-list writers. Interlinked and meritocratic, seething with fierce debate and rivalries, they're the best thing to hit journalism since the rise of the political pamphlet."Thank you to Jeff Jarvis for excerpting so much of the article.
Campaign manager: blogads a wonderful system
The campaign manager for one of the congressional campaigns came back last week to renew some blogads. Afterwards he sent this note:
"Your purchasing engine is extremely easy to use for both the initial purchase and ad updates. I think this is a wonderful system.
Roman Levit
Campaign Manager
Barrow for Congress"
Chandler nets 20-fold return on blogads
Amy Keller of Roll Call did a great job earlier this week covering the Chandler campaign's use of blogads.
With an investment of only $2,000, and in less than two weeks, the campaign has raked in between $45,000 and $50,000 in contributions from blog readers, and that number is growing every day, said Chandler campaign manager Mark Nickolas.
Chandler — a former state auditor and former state attorney general — is facing off against GOP state Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr in the Feb. 17 special election for the Lexington-area House seat. But while Kerr has outraised Chandler by several hundred thousand dollars — as of late last week, Kerr had raised about $1.2 million and Chandler was estimating his fundraising total at about $650,000 — Chandler’s campaign says its fundraising pace is picking up and at least part of the surge has come from the Web.
“It has been phenomenal,” Nickolas said. “I get an e-mail every time there’s a contribution — and we know from the e-mail the source is a blog when they come through that avenue. Since the morning of Jan. 29, the FEC [filing] cut-off, I’ve put all those e-mails in a separate file. So far there are 711.”...
Nickolas said the contributions from blog readers are “averaging in the $40 to $50 range.” The vast number of contributions are between $20 and $25, but every so often a $1,000 or $2,000 contribution will pop up to “boost the average.”
While Nickolas was initially hoping simply to make back the campaign’s $2,000 investment, the gamble has brought in more than 20 times that amount.
Chandler’s experience seems to reinforce conclusions made by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, which in a recent report stated that the “great promise of online fundraising lies in its low transaction costs,” enabling political fundraisers to “look to average people for funding.”
Indeed, as Chandler’s blog choices demonstrate, while the price of running a campaign ad on a blog varies greatly from one site to another, doing so is uncontestably cost-effective.
“You can get the premier spot for a lot of these blogs for just $400,” remarked Nickolas, who consulted with Blogads’ Henry Copeland for advice on where to place his ads.
According to the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet study, the “online political citizens” are “dramatically more likely than the general public to donate money to candidates,” and by the end of 2003, approximately 46 percent of that universe had already donated to a candidate or political organization in the past two to three months. By way of comparison, only 10 percent of the general population has donated to a candidate or political party during the same time period.
The study also found that Democrats tend to be more comfortable giving online, with nearly half of all Democrats — 49 percent — saying they donated online, compared to just 11 percent of Republican donors.
“The thing about this community is they are educated. They pay attention to politics. They care and they tend to have a little bit more disposable income,” Nickolas observed. “If you can appeal to them, they are more than happy to throw $20, $50 or $100 at you.” ...
Can Chandler’s success during this special election translate into a winning fundraising formula for other campaigns — particularly in a busy campaign season in which dozens upon dozens of candidates are competing for attention?
“There’s no doubt about it,” Nickolas said, though he conceded: “We’ve been blessed by the fact that we’re the only race out there.” He said the campaign’s finance director has been inundated with calls from other Democrats in the fundraising arena wanting to know if they can do this in their campaign.
Nickolas is sure of one thing, however: “We’ve probably raised the real estate prices on these blogs.”
A media pack(age) not a herd
Glenn Reynolds writes: "BLOGADS seem to work. Despite its taking-in-each-others'-wash overtones, I bought blogads on TalkLeft and BillHobbs.com for my wife's documentary, Six. The orders have poured in, and the ads, for a month and two weeks respectively, paid for themselves almost overnight. It's not choking the local post office or anything, but it's a pretty good response. Meanwhile, PoliticalWire reports that the Chandler for Congress blogad paid for itself in donations the first day. Maybe Henry's onto something."
As Glenn is wont to say: blogs are a pack, not a herd. Ignore them at your peril.
Political blogs excite journalists
NPR's ombudsman eats crow after dissing blogs.
E&P reports on TPM blogger of the year award.
SF Chronicle says political insiders watch blogs like DailyKos. Here's one enthusiastic insider/blog reader:
"I'm a reader. I think Markos has done an incredible job," said the president of the New Democrat Network, Simon Rosenberg, a centrist who worked in Bill Clinton's famous "war room" during the 1992 campaign and continued working for Clinton throughout his presidency. "Kos is one of the places I go for full-time information every day," Rosenberg said. "If people like me do that, you know it's having an impact."Tallahassee Democrat says:
"Blogs are the biggest communication innovation for the 2004 election," wrote Alexis Rice, author of a recent blog study at Johns Hopkins University. "Blogs are transforming campaign communication and will become not only an important tool in the presidential election, but in future state and local elections."Before receiving his award yesterday, Josh Marshall reports, Josh tried to explain blogs to Arthur Schlesinger, one of Josh's heros. He wanders over to the great historian and his wife and starts babbling.
To be polite Schlesinger’s wife asked me to explain to them just what a blog is. And though I get this question pretty often, it turns out to be a rather challenging one if the people you’re trying to explain it to don’t necessarily have a lot of clear web reference points to make sense of what you’re saying. I ended up telling them that it was something like political commentary structured like a personal journal with occasional reporting mixed in. Now, as I was explaining and watching the looks on everyone’s faces it was incrementally becoming clear to me that this was playing rather like saying that something was like a washing machine structured like a rhinoceros with the occasional sandwich thrown in. And, as Schlesinger himself had said rather little through all this, it was also dawning on me that being one of the four guests of honor at this little event was providing no guarantee against making a bit of a fool of myself.
'Extremely pleased' advertiser on Atrios and DailyKos
Got this note, titled "Site Traffic Quadrupled OVERNITE: A Testimonial you will like" at 3AM from Richard Luckett, the creative Texan behind lefty paraphernalia-seller and publisher Agitproperties, about blogads he's running on DailyKos and Atrios.
"HC:
I wanted to get the word out about our new column written by an anonymous Army intelligence officer just back from Iraq and Afghanistan for two years. These ads were updated late Monday night. I was extremely pleased with the results. Feel free to use this info as you see fit. I even wrote the pitch for you. ; )
Richard"
Here is Richard's testimonial:
Agencies: are your clients’ shrinking ad dollars this well-placed in front of a pool of potential consumers virtually pre-screened to have an interest in what they are selling? These stats prove plainly that a small, inexpensive campaign of well-written and well-targeted blog ads can quadruple a site’s traffic (and potential sales) overnight.Many Internet advertisers would not be ashamed to see results like that for an entire campaign, not just day one. As you may recall, Luckett has raved about blogads before, saying ads on blogs are four times as effective as ads in the Village Voice. I should note that it is not just blogs that drive Luckett's success. His laser-sharp design and punchy copy are key. He also changes his creative every one to three days, sooner if an ad is dogging. Here's the eye-grabbing graphic for the ad he mentions:
Day before “The Trooper Speaks” blog ads were posted:
Total Page Views for this date:289
Unique Visitors for this date:178
First Time Visitors:148
Returning Visitors:30
Average Page Views per Visitor:1.6
Average Page Views per Hour:12.0
Average Unique Visitors Per Hour:7.4
Day after “The Trooper Speaks” blog ads were posted:
Total Page Views for this date:1,545
Unique Visitors for this date:743
First Time Visitors:695
Returning Visitors:48
Average Page Views per Visitor:2.1
Average Page Views per Hour:64.4
Average Unique Visitors Per Hour:31.0
Here is the ad's current text:
After two years in Afghanistan and Iraq, "Anonymous", a U.S. Army Intelligence officer, speaks out weekly on what he saw and experienced. His sad, brave and poignant words should be required reading at CENTCOM. Read his new column exclusively at agitproperties.com, the home of the world-famous FAUX NEWS coffee mug, KIRK ANDERSON'S Got Allies? tee and our new COALITION OF THE BILLING tee. agitproperties.com - the truth starts here.
Advertiser: 'blogads are absolutely phenomenal'
Richard Luckett, who handles marketing for leftish vendor Agitproperties, has been one of our most creative advertisers, running a series of humorous ads on Atrios and now DailyKos. Richard called me up last night to rave about how well things are going. This morning he reprised his comments by e-mail:
Businesses and ad agencies that dismiss blogs and blog ads are nuts! Blogads are absolutely phenomenal. Compared with print ads we've run in the Village Voice, blogads target our exact demographic and give four times the 'bang-for-buck.' You are keeping our fulfillment guy extremely busy. Bloggers put us on the map and blogads are definitely keeping us there.Advertisers should study Agitproperties' strategy. Update your ad text and image often. Be cheeky. Be exhuberant. Use some html tags. Know your audience. Keep some pitches inside. And put your fulfillment guy on overtime.
Here are the components of the ad Richard is running today:
Ho Ho Faux!
What better way to enjoy a cup of holiday cheer than in our 12 oz. FAUX NEWS coffee mug in "Hannity's Heart" black?
See it, along with our infamous FOX-baiting O'REILLY YOUTH tee, our world-famous FAUX NEWS tee, our timely Got Allies? tee, way-cool TED RALL stuff and more at agitproperties.com - for the unrepentant Leftists on your gift list.
Can you top this?
Paul Libman, the impressario behind Oy to the World, called up to tell me the impact of his blogad on TalkingPointsMemo on sales of his Klezmer Christmas CD. I took notes and confirmed them later with Paul:
"After my ad for Klezmer Christmas started running yesterday on TalkingPointsMemo, my traffic was up five or six fold. I was up late last night processing orders. This is fantastic. I think blogads are going to be much bigger than banners. You are able to so closely target the sensibility of the people you are advertising to. I just knew Josh's audience would appreciate the humor of my album and I've been proven right."
I hate to sound like an internet utopian, but this is one of those win/win/win/win/win situations. Paul Libman finds customers he could never affordably reach otherwise. Lots of shoppers will sleep easier having crossed a few names off their holiday gift lists. The gift recipients will have a (rye) laugh. Josh Marshall makes some money doing what he loves. And Blogads gets to pay for some of its new server. Oy to the world, indeed!
Tina loves blogs
Renowned editor Tina Brown, via a Washington Post chat: "I love the blog.s Think they are really channging the collective voice of journalism. People are sick of mediated coverage. They like the noholds barred appraoch." (Via Jeff Jarvis.)
Blogger bites advertiser
Publishers often get pushed by advertisers either to run flattering profiles or to kill unflattering exposes. Often enough, publishers succumb to the temptation. (Some publishers have even institutionalized the practice of drafting editorial staff into writing advertorials.)
Journalism professors worried about a blogger's ability to handle the same temptations should take comfort from the case of blogger Sgt. Stryker, who yesterday sold an ad to author Harrry Helms for his book Inside the Shadow Government.
Stryker reacted by poking fun at Helms' ad (or site or book?), calling it "basically poorly written fiction that would be funny if it weren't so passe."
Apologetic to his readers for running the ad, he commented "...never let it be said that I let principle get in the way of making a buck (25, in this case)."
Helms, an author with plenty of books for sale at Amazon, asked for his money back and we obliged. I understand that it would be galling to have your socio-political analysis trashed by someone who you've just paid $25 for publicity. But from a PR perspective, the ad and Stryker's reaction were a home run. Plenty of other advertisers would kill for Helms' 18% clickthru.
Blogs are an unedited space where people curse, brainstorm, rhapsodize and generally shoot off their mouths. With individual personality, ethics and accountability on the line and undiluted by the corporate "we," bloggers seem more likely to bite the hand that feeds them than lick it.
This isn't your grandmother's newspaper. And for the right kind of advertiser, that's the best news in a long time.
Wired editor: 'look at bloggers'
Wired magazine's editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, explains how he monitors technology news. "I don't look that much to journalists, not directly. I tend to look at bloggers," says Anderson. (Via Paidcontent.org.)
'Very good CPM and CPC rates...'
Eli Israel, who runs the fantastic spam filter Messagefire that's been advertised on a number of blogs, writes, "Thanks for the blogads service. We've gotten very good CPM and CPC rates this way; it's definitely been helpful to us."
Democratic, amazing and so cool...
Greg Beato writes: "One of the great benefits of blogads is that they essentially democratize media buying. It's expanding the number of venues where small advertisers can afford to run ads."
Oliver Griswold writes: "Thanks for all this amazing technology!"
After ordering an ad, Ginger Mayerson writes: "This was great fun! Blogads are so cool, they need sweaters."
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