Atrios has 13 ads…

Atrios is currently running 13 blogads, a record for him and us.

I hope we see lots more of this. Ads are fun. More ads are better — they start to talk to each other and play off each other. They constitute a marketplace of messages. Nobody would visit Times Square if it had only one billboard and nobody would want to advertise there either.

Why don’t traditional publishers adopt the same bountiful strategy? I think the limited advertising slots on corporate media sites (banner on top, a couple buttons on the side) are a vestige of the portal mentality. And the false scarcity that portal mentality provokes is — surprise — a good way to prop prices up so print rate cards aren’t undercut.

Bloggers with lots of space and low overheads can take a more market-friendly approach.

Considers the winners:

— Lower prices and more ads means individual entrepreneurs or ideologues can afford to advertise.
— The reader can skim, compare and contrast and find the stuff that’s relevant.
— Running lots of ads at once gives the blogger a higher effective CPM than some big media manage.

Everyone wins — except traditional publishers.

Update November 6: The joys of supply and demand. Atrios has raised prices. The link to his order page says “Temporarily Not Taking New Ads (unless you really want to pay the temporarily obscene prices)” … and a one month ad (temporarily) costs $3000.