One of the more interesting and controversial uses of the BlogAds system of blog advertising has been a campaign by the United Church of Christ. Today they’ve come out with some statistics that reveal the success of this campaign. One of the keys to their success is that they created an ad that was not only visually stimulating (it is animated) but also one that was controversial and that stimulated the bloggers that ran the ad to comment on it themselves – thereby stimulating even further attention for the ad. We’re starting to see more and more of these types of ads using the BlogAds system as marketers begin to see the potential of ads that become part of the conversation on a blog.

‘After only one week of utilizing online blogads (shown at right) to promote the UCC’s Stillspeaking Initiative, more than 25,000 internet users have clicked through one of 50 purchased blogads to view the church’s online 30-second “bouncer” commercial….

The UCC’s new blogad utilizes a series of still photos from the denomination’s 30-second television commercial – rejected twice as “too controversial” by the major broadcast television networks – to entice blog visitors to “see the ad the networks didn’t want you to see.”‘

Read more at United Church of Christ News: UCC blogads attracting widespread attention

John Hawkins has a good interview with BlogAds owner – Henry Copeland over at A Mini-Interview With Henry Copeland From Blogads. Henry is always most insightful and a creative thinker that I respect so when I see him featured in this type of thing I always carefully read it from top to bottom. Here are a few highlights:

‘John Hawkins: Do you believe the number of advertisers and amount of revenue generated by blogging is going to continue to grow for the rest of this year and into next year?

Henry Copeland: I think the numbers will continue to grow at LEAST until bloggers get 0.1% of the total US annual advertising spend, $250 billion. That may take 3 years or it may take 18, but it is inevitable. Bloggers understand their subjects and their audiences better than anyone else in media AND they’ve got the lowest overheads. After all, pajamas cost much less than suits.

John Hawkins: I want you to play Nostradamus here — don’t worry, everybody understands you’re just speculating — and give me an estimate: How many bloggers do you see reaching the “earning a living” threshold over the next few years?

Henry Copeland: I’d be thrilled to reach 500. But 5000 is possible. And if things go really well 50,000.

John Hawkins: Are you considering branching out into other types of ads like banner ads or text ads?

Henry Copeland: We’re just now adding a pure text unit, something designed to promote more intra-blog communication: 500 characters, no image, no edit, no HTML, no breaks, no bulk buy. Banners and other IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) units are antithetical to the spirit of blogging — there’s no relationship with hyper-literate, hyper-linked conversational blogger way of thinking.’

Read more of this interview at A Mini-Interview With Henry Copeland From Blogads

Over the past few days I’ve had a number of bloggers email asking for advice on how much to charge for advertising on their blogs. I thought I’d open the question up for some discussion.

How much would you charge for advertising on your site?

Of course the answer would vary depending upon traffic, topic, ad type – but let me throw out a couple of ‘hypotheticals’ – well they are actually real life examples from the readers emails.

a) an established site (blog and discussion forum) with 45,000 unique visitors per month (1500 per day) on a niche topic with loyal readership which is growing. How would you determine how much to charge for a banner (468 x 60) across the whole site?

b) a blog with a page rank of 5 with daily traffic levels of 500 unique visitors – mainly coming from Search Engines. How much would you charge for a text link high on the side bar with a title/link and a short description.

c) blog with 10,000 impressions per day looking to sell a variety of ads including the two above (banner and text) as well as skyscraper ads.

So how would you determine how much to charge for advertising? What factors would you consider, what is a reasonable rate to ask? I have my own ideas which I’ll be happy to share once we’ve had a bit of discussion – but I’m interested to know how others make these kinds of decisions. Feel free to contribute below as you feel you’d like.

Microsoft will begin a beta search advertising program shortly says Bloomberg – no word yet on if they plan to extend this system into other websites as Google have done with Adsense and as Yahoo are expected to do shortly.

‘Microsoft Corp., which runs the No. 3 U.S. Internet search engine, plans to start a service where clients will pay to be listed alongside its MSN search results, people familiar with the plans said.

The service will be similar to competing programs from Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft will announce a pilot program March 16, said the people, who asked not to be identified. These paid searches auction off placement next to Web search results to companies with related products.’

Shiny Media has landed a great ad deal with vacuum cleaner manufacturer Dyson who will be running an ad campaign at their blogs Shiny Shiny and Tech Digest for a new product. The ads look pretty cool too – based on the 70′s ‘computer/TV’ game ‘Pong’.

Just another example of blogging attracting some serious mainstream advertising dollars.

Read more about the deal over at Shiny Media: Dyson sponsors Shiny titles

found via The Blog Herald

Weblogs Inc are taking blog advertising in a new direction with their Focus Ads which invite their readers to leave a comment on advertisers (you can see one here). Its an interesting concept that they are promoting as adding to their transparency in advertising. Here’s what they say about it.

‘Weblogs, Inc. Focus Ads are meant to create transparency in advertising — helping our readers to gain insight and helping our advertisers to create a better product or service. Our advertisers participate because they believe in their brands and are willing to improve them through the feedback of enthusiasts.’

So far the concept on the Grifffin technologies feedback page seems to be pretty positive but I guess time will tell whether advertisers actually want the feedback and whether readers can be bothered giving it.

I’m sorry for my absence this past few days, I’ve been speaking at a conference and also trying to keep up with posting on a couple of trade shows in the US that are related to a couple of my blogs. Things should return to normal here in the next day or two.

In the mean time – here are a few articles that I just noticed on Blog advertising.

- fulminator has a two part article on ‘The Blog as an Advertising Medium – Part 1 and Part 2

- Clickz has a feature titled – Blog Advertising: Right for You?