I’d been hearing good things about Technorati Media around the place, but after a strong recommendation from Steve Spalding at Gnomedex I contacted them and we went from there. Most of the ad units are now live, and although we’ve come in prior to the 4th quarter ad buys, Technorati is serving ads on the site now.

It’s too early for me to recommend Technorati Media as a service you should use, but the professionalism of the team, and their patience to date speaks well of the company. The ultimate test will be time, but certainly I wouldn’t have signed the agreement if I wasn’t fairly confident, so take that as a part recommendation

Transitional arrangements

Effective immediately we will not be selling against US impressions. If you’re interesting in buy ads, please contact Technorati Media directly. The ad sales page will be shortly updated. We obviously have a number of 125px advertisers on the site, and these units will be phased out over the next few weeks, while honoring the remaining periods on each ad. Our thanks to existing advertisers Allinfo, Themeforest, Cosmic Tap and WonderHowTo for their support, and we’d encourage you to check out every one of them. Also thanks to our previous sponsors as well.

I’m still not 100% sure on what to do with the non-US ad impressions, which can vary from 10% of traffic one day, to 35% the next. For the moment we’re running a mix of Adsdaq and Adsense, but certainly if you’re interested in non-US traffic I’m always open to proposals.

Recommended advertising networks

We’ve come a fairly long way since I asked the question about why blog advertising is so difficult in 2008, then later called for interest in forming a blog advertising group. We had some great expressions of interest from that post, but not enough numbers to make it work; my thanks to all those who expressed their interest if I haven’t thanked you previously.

There are two services I’ve used since starting The Inquisitr I’m happy to recommend, although with the proviso that you can do better with a direct deal like we have with Technorati Media, but not everyone can get those sorts of deals.

The first provider is BuySellAds.com, who have dutifully provided the ad serving and sales platform for our 125px spots. They do take a cut from your sales, but you get your blog listed on their site and this does help sales. After switching to them from direct sales we doubled our 125px sales rate. Good people who are happy to help, and I’m more than happy to recommend them.

The second service is Adsdaq from ContextWeb. You wont get personal service from them, but the idea works. With Adsdaq, you nominate the price you want for your ad units, and they place ads based on that price. Where they can’t place ads for you, the units revert to Adsense or what ever other advertising service you use. Depending on the traffic and month, they’ve managed to serve roughly 20-30% of our inventory at rates higher than anything I’d managed to get before. It’s the only service I can recommend that you can’t lose on, because if they can’t fill your inventory at the price, you get what you were getting before. Worth a look.

Also a shout out for Buzzlogic who is doing some interesting things. We’ve popped up on their list of clients, which is nice, and we did run a 125px unit from them which was returning some nice rates. My only issue with the program when I tested it was a lack of ad sizes, with the only units offered a 125px, and two skyscrappers. This may have changed now though.

Related posts:

1. Technorati acquires AdEngage, expanding ad mix
2. 125px Ad Units Are Back: Advertise on The Inquisitr
3. Advertise on The Inquisitr