Cathy at Cityrag urges her readerse to consider advertising blogs.

Blogs are an incredibly powerful media outlet. Most are visited daily (or several times a day) by extremely loyal readers who absorb every word and image on the site. Blog readers feel a close and often personal relationship with the sites on their daily “hit list”.

Read Krempasky who has been the claxon on this issue for the last 18 months. Full speed ahead to November ’06.

Shankar Gupta pounces on the Upyourbudget story and extracts the money quote: the whole campaign cost less than a single 30 second TV spot. More from his article:

Scott Deaver, Budget’s chief marketing officer, said the entire contest and promotion–including the $160,000 in prize money–cost less than a single 30-second spot on a highly rated TV show. According to BlogAd’s tracking numbers, the campaign, as of Thursday night, recorded 19.9 million impressions on 125 different blogs, garnering 56,446 clicks at a cost of roughly 25 cents per click. The campaign kicked off Oct. 24, and will end today. The ads ran on major, big-name blogs like Gothamist.com, CityRag.com, and Metafiler.com, as well as smaller-name blogs like TheDailyWTF.com, TonyPierce.com, and YouAintNoPicasso.com. “That was the point, to try some grassroots stuff and try some of the smaller blogs. We wanted to reach a really broad population,” said [B.L.] Ochman. No matter what blog you’re looking at, if it’s consistently reaching its audience, it probably has some loyal following there.”

The hot weather, weird and impudent for November, finally broke and now we’ve got 50 degree air so unhumid and clear it feels vacuum packed.

We walked along the Eno River this weekend, jumping from rock to rock and trying to catch leaves.

Last night, I did a little copy editing on Zsofi’s translation of five pages of answers her parents had given to a child’s questions about their lives, particularly during WWII. I’d heard most of the stories before… a deadpan recitation of bombs missing by feet, aunts and uncles who died marching to camps, children sharing documents to avoid deportation, listening to tank cannons, hunger.

When I’d finished, Zsofi said she wanted to get back on the computer to work on Toad Talk, the school newsletter she edits. Struck by the absurdity of the juxtaposition, we both started laughing. And then we were crying.

Gearing up for a huge 2006, Taegan Goddard has redesigned Political Wire. The redesign compliments the design of DailyKos — as my colleague Miklos used to say when we were newspapering together: “two’s a trend!”

If you visit this page on Upyourbudget.com, you can see various iterations of UpyourBudget’s blogads along with the accompanying clickthrus. Start at the bottom to see the oldest blogad first and you’ll see an astonishing 10-fold improvement in the clickthrus between ad #1 and ad #4… going from 0.05% to 0.52%.

Zeeowee!

Seeking to promote Budget Renta Car’s blog-only sixteen city treasure hunt over the last four weeks, B.L. Ochman and Komra Moriko have been relentless in experimenting and bold in pushing the envelope. They have seen each innovation amply rewarded. More importantly, they’ve been having fun and it shows. A brief recap of their innovations:

#1: cool image, not much text to ensnare the reader
#2: elusive photo, more text, including four links to blogs
#3: pseudo video image (vaguely sexual?) and nine links (all to sections of upyourbudget site)
#4: more video-ism, more mystery, lose the quotation marks and capitalization, twelve links!

The vision is perfect for the link-rich, attitude-packed, p2p, narrative mosh-pit that is the blogosphere. The ads build on a creative foundation laid by Richard Turner and Seth Miller at Turner Broadcast (here and here), Farah Miller and Stephanie at Knopf (here and here), Brian Clark and Justice Mitchell (here and here) and Beth Kirsch (near the bottom Kirsch.)

Congratulations to BL, Komra and Budget. For all you blogad-o-philes, this demonstration is a must-forward for your colleagues and friends. And for those of your creating blogads, the bar another 200 pixels higher.

Here’s more on how to design great blog advertising, from a post by Brian Clark.

Pete Lerma of Clickhere, whose column in ClickZ I’ve always admired, got the Blogads vibe big in his column today. “It’s becoming more and more practical for brands to embrace the blog movement.” Thank you for joining the revolution Pete!

Also recapping Ad:Tech insights, Beth Kirsch concludes (in all caps, in case you miss it!) “BLOG ADVERTSING NEEDS TO BE PART OF THE CONVERSTION.”

Oceana, the first cause to advertise on blogs, is looking for an e-marketing director.

We are currently seeking a truly ‘out of the box’ strategist to lead Oceana’s cutting edge environmental on-line activism and marketing program. The Director will focus on growing, activating and fundraising from Oceana’s worldwide base of 260,000 plus e-activists via email alerts, blogging and savvy management of the Oceana websites…

You can read the full CraigsList offering here.

The ultra-sweet blogads for Anne Rice’s latest book, Christ the Lord, link to blog posts about the book. The conversation continues: “suddenly my blog traffic spiked. It felt like Anne Rice was sending all those people over to read my stuff.” Yes, when things go right,“markets are conversations.”

Every time I come to Chicago, I’m impressed. Today I’m attending Blawgthink, a gathering of 100 lawyers which is being held in Catalyst Ranch, a retro-space in a rehabbed warehouse in the middle of town. A really cool spot.