Matt Welch stumbles on one reason why sponsorships beat pay-per-click models.

Hey everyone, make sure not to click on those GoogleAds about baseball crap over to your left! Wouldn’t want the advertisers to have all you yucky customers on their websites whilst sitting at a computer! Instead, click on the BlogAd about the new documentary film Little Man, which opens in L.A. tonight.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post (happily, no doubt) details the risk of advertising where real people are brainstorming.

Blogads.com makes it into the third sentence of the story. “Kaine’s campaign had purchased the space through a broker that put his advertising on numerous liberal-leaning blogs.” If the ads’ provenance is worth mentioning, why not toss in the name of the “broker,” aka Blogads.com? In the interest of full disclosure, should WPost have mentioned that ads like Kaine’s would have in the past appeared in the pages of Wpost.com, and that this “broker” is poaching hundreds of thousands in ad revenues a year from the august pages of Wpost.com?

If publishers want to flee “upmarket” (ie peddling content in which people can’t think aloud and/or write what they really think) rather than fight blogs on their own turf, great. (Wondering what the heck I’m talking about, read this book.)

There’s apparently the first $10K winner for Budget’s blog-based treasure hunt.

“Each week’s treasure hunt will begin on Monday morning and end the following Sunday at 11:59 pm EST.” There are four cities each week, with a $10K prize in each.

Apparently, folks are skipping work to head out and hunt for these. Luckily, it appears none are cached in our area. Here’s the cool blogad Budget is currently running.

How quickly will spam start to flow to this address?

Come and get it boys: nickblogads@gmail.com …

Other potential headlines:

Blog, blog, blog, Budget.

RIP: the press release

In a lightly branded online/offline game, Budget rental car has launched the first blue-chip online/offline treasure hunt, Upyourbudget.com, conceived by a blogger BL Ochman, illustrated by a blogger Hugh MacLeod, run on blog software Movable Type, advertised exclusively on blogs, and first reported by blogs like Adrants and MarketingVox.

More details from Adrants and MarketingVox. MarketingVox quotes Ochman: there’s no press release for the game. It’s all blog, baby.

We went to the state fair Wednesday night. The air was a balmy, buzzing black pillow splashed with whirling pink and orange neons. The grinning carnies took money joyfully from kids and adults alike, $2 a ball toss, $2 to race a car for 45 seconds, $2 to pull a coke bottle upright. We spotted the fine print (“an outstanding illusion!”) and missed the snake lady. The bumper cars were the only trickless joy.

Last night, 100 kids playing Bach and Twinkle. Stunning to see what kids achieve.

Driving into work this morning I stumbled into this sad Sarajevo retrospective. I was in Budapest then and regret my inaction.

We sometimes get requests from potential advertisers who need help creating compelling blogads. So we’re going to link to some folks who are able to help. Here are some cool examples from Jay Ballenger.

I should also mention that I’d recommend Charles Fincher’s cartoons as a unique hook into the blogosphere’s psyche.

Now appearing on a number of music blogs. Here’s the ad and a short analysis.

I’ve just lost 10 IQ points while posting this. Thanks Mom!

Brian Clark, auteur of blogad campaigns for Audi, Levis and Sharp TV, has started running Blogads on an indie movie blog community he’s organized, IndieWire.

Today Brian published an illustrated page with six great tips on How to Write a Killer Blogad.

Thank you dude! (I’m going to send you a Reemco gift certificate shortly.)

I’ve been arguing that anyone who thinks the “old media” model is a gonner should stop theorizing and just short newspaper stocks.

“Newspaper” is an oxymoron. Nowadays, anything on paper is either history or a novel. Though newspaper companies are buying and building online extensions, the revenue gains will never offset the scale of losses coming as subscribers and advertisers defect to cheaper, faster tools AND as individual papers lose their monopoly pricing leverage in their respective markets.

Another idea: the more I see of big ad agencies, the more I understand that they are a siamese twin of mass media, each a command and control hierarchy built to achieve economies of scale at the cost of human voice and intimacy. In a mass market environment, the model works wonderfully. Will it stand up in the age of DIY and p2p and conversational markets?

My bet: 1000 smart people in a line are not smarter than 10 smart people in a circle.

Anyway, here are two big agencies to consider shorting to test this hypothesis:
Omnicom (OMC) today at $79, a P/E of 19
WPP (WPPGY) today at $49, a P/E of 27