Advertising Hasn't Killed Blogs Yet
Writing in E-Media Tidbits this week, Steve Outing writes about advertising in blogs and says: "It was inevitable, and here it comes."

Outing says advertising is about to come to the blogosphere and refers to separate projects in the works by Moreover founder Nick Denton, and Henry Copeland at the European-based Pressflex. More on that in a moment.

But first, let me take issue with the "here it comes" part of Outing's statement. Amazon.com says it started its "associates" program in 1996. The associates program is responsible for those ubiquitous little ads all over the Web that direct buyers to Amazon's pages. In turn, the page that ran the Amazon ad gets a cut of any eventual purchase. Amazon claims more than 600,000 associates in this program. If I had way too much time on my hands, I'd sift through their SEC filings to find out how much money they pay out and how much income is derived from the program.

Also, we shouldn't forget Matt Drudge, who some would argue is the original blogger. Drudge started using banner ads on his site some time ago.

Late last year, we started seeing the proliferation of blog tip jars from Amazon and PayPal. How about direct merchandising? Already you can buy InstaPundit T-shirts, mugs, hats and totes, books written by bloggers Ken Layne and Virginia Postrel or a rock opera CD from blogger Greg McIlvaine.

So I don't think it's much of a leap that some blogs will start carrying classified ads or banner ads that are targeted specifically to blog readers.

Back to Denton and Copeland. Denton's project is a bit mysterious at this point. And even though I actually had lunch with him and we talked about things of the blog world I don't know exactly on what his project will focus. Copeland's Pressflex venture, on the other hand, is nearly ready to launch. Copeland makes his case on his company blog, though you have to read to the end to get the classified ad lowdown.

I've actually volunteered to be one of Henry's beta guinea pigs with the classified ad strips. Albeit, I'm probably the most technologically challenged, design-ambivalent rodent he'll drop in the maze, but that's part of the test, right?

I'm anxious to see how Denton and Copeland's projects will change the world of bloggers. Undoubtedly, there will be a group who complain it was only cool way back in the early days (you know who you are) and will pretend to hate change for the sake of change. But I fail to see how sticking some ads on a blog page is even in the ball park of say, changing the name of your stadium to "3-Com Park" or heaven forbid, making your professional baseball team's jerseys bear the sponsor's name as if they were Little Leaguers.

In a semi-related vein, the latest thing to give blogging a new shape is this NYC Bloggers site, which allows New York City bloggers to list their sites by subway stop. When I got an e-mail invite to join this Tuesday, there were four people signed up. Right now there are 448. The site information says there's "no rings to join, no code to put on your page" but one suspects that if they don't see their site as a foundation for a great business idea, I'm sure someone else will.
- posted by Amy @ 5/31/2002 02:05:00 PM