Blogads developments

Some work for a big publishing client and a necessary but arduous software/hardware upgrade put us into hibernation for the last six weeks. Now we’re back! We’ve just created a CSS adstrip, which simplifies design customization from the blogger’s side. Today, we’ve also revived optional comments on ads, something we experimented with a few month ago. Comments are working well on sites like Fark and Kuro5hin and should exponentiate clickthrus on ads for artistic works. (Although some artists won’t like everything that gets said about their work!) You can see the CSS adstrip at right and use the comments feature on the Blogcritics ad.

Also, we’ve just reorganized the order page to a) give priority to bigger sites and b) make it easier for advertisers to comparison shop. (The page view estimate come from the number of times each adstrip is served from our server.) If you want to support great bloggers, please feel free to link into the page. Here’s that URL again — http://www.blogads.com/order_html — so you can copy/paste right now.

One marketing-savvy blogger, Olivier Travers at Scifan, now nets an incredible average of $20 per CPM on his Blogads. This blows even leading publishers like the WSJ.com out of the water, especially since Olivier doesn’t have to underwrite the ad salespeople, Oracle DBAs, Vignette licenses, copy editors and lackeys who bleed “real” new media operations. How much does Olivier sweat to sell ads? He mentions the ads to every author and PR person who contacts him. The rest of the time he focuses on dominating his niche.