Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: July 21, 2008
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I’ve been doing a lot of research in the blog advertising space since launching The Inquisitr back in May. Unlike when I started blogging, there is lots of choice, but very little that pays well.
When I say pays well, I mean anything north of $1 CPM, although preferably higher still. People I speak to running Adsense rarely hit the $1 eCPM rate (unless its a hardcore, targeted niche blog in a high paying vertical) and other companies I’ve tried pay terribly low rates. One recent company I ran on the site delivered 5c for 2 weeks worth of ads. Other companies offer spammy ads and deliver 20-30c CPM, better than nothing, but completely unsustainable as a business proposition.
Surely, for mid-tier blogs at least (anything say above 30,000 page views a month through to 200-300,000 a month, too low for Federated Media) there must be a company or solution that offers better rates for advertising.
I get that scale is always an issue. b5media, a company I co-founded started with an email I sent out to some people with a proposal to collectively sell advertising (the idea being that collectively we had scale to sell), that warped into a blog network in itself. Is there scope today perhaps for mid-tier blogs who aren’t big enough for Federated Media to collectively get together to sell advertising, the combined forces of those blogs offering scale to be attractive to larger advertisers who prefer big ad buys?
Perhaps you’re a company with a solution to this equation? If you think you can help, please feel free to drop me an email and I’ll happily take a look and write about your company. If you are interested in advertising on The Inquisitr, you can find the details here.
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Jul 21, 2008
never heard of them, but looking now + thx
Jul 21, 2008
In a word, yes.
Jul 21, 2008
Jason said> I still contend that advertising, outside of search result ads, is a doomed revenue stream.
Gotta agree that the “search economy” is where the action is ..
Duncan, I sent you a separate email with thoughts. Do tell if it gets caught by the junk filter or something ..
Jul 21, 2008
Duncan, speaking of Federated Media, is it only traffic restriction for them or is it also an issue of belonging to the Silicon Valley crowd, any idea on that? I mean, I have approached them once and they set for me an unbelievable traffic target to reach before they even want to talk to me which made me question why a number of blogs that they already have in the network have much lower traffic.
So my concern is in this particular case it is not only about traffic, it also has other issues for them to consider – like real money can only be distributed among certain select bloggers.
Jul 22, 2008
i paid 25 cents a day for the seattle times just to read doonesbury. private business newletters are sometimes thousands of dollars a year …
somewhere is a (micro)subscription model waiting to happen. i would gladly pay minimum 10 bucks a week for a set of blogs that i liked, maybe another 10 or 20 for a whole suite of surfing possibilities, unknowns, revenue of course to be spread out …
not thinking aol-like, something a bit wilder
i bet isps will come up with this, as well
Jul 22, 2008
Currently, Contextual advertising from Google is doing so well because they have a brand, scale and there is the ability to make 1 ad in a matter of minutes and manipulate it into any size.
No one has been able to take control of display advertising in the same way that Google has. Firstly, if you are going to start a campaign you have to make either 1 ad for a specific size or like 5 different sizes, which takes time. Currently, there are ad networks, self-service platforms, but no one has been able to put everything together in 1 platform that allows publishers to control all of their ad inventory at once and maximise its yield. Most ad networks for example are all about numbers and no personal interaction to really improve $$$$
Jul 22, 2008
In fact, I have not had problems reaching them by email and speaking to John Battelle himself – but I would not be so sure about traffic since the target they set for me is much higher than quite a number of their blogs currently has. So I could not help but jump to a conclusion that it was something like a closed club for select bloggers.
Jul 22, 2008
Thanks for the explanation, I have bookmarked them in case the solution I have chosen for now stops to work at some point.
Jul 22, 2008
A few months ago ProBlogger ran a list of 12 CPM alternatives to AdSense: <br><br><a href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/03/03/12-cpm-alternatives-to-adsense/">http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/03/03/1…</a><br><br>Through this I found AdsDaq, which lets you set your own CPM price. AdsDaq will either find advertisers to match that price or rollover to another network. It's worked pretty well for me and generates almost as much money as AdSense. <br><br>A number of other companies have also launched ad networks that will compete with the likes of Federated Media. I recently signed up with Technorati Media, but there are other companies like Buzzlogic that are also working with small to medium sized blogs.
May 10, 2009
very good to know that your contribution to super …..