June 15, 2004

Yes, Blogs Are A Great Advertising Environment

I've been reading posts about how blogs are great for advertisers and how blogs reach desirable audiences.

If you're here, you likely know that I'm a founding partner of a media agency called Underscore Marketing. It's my job to know how blogs can tap into desirable audiences from an advertising perspective. I can give you some anecdotal evidence that blogs get the job done, but please know that clients are usually very skittish about talking about their online advertising publicly. (So what I'm about to say here needs to be somewhat vague.) Suffice it to say:


  • I have a client that was willing to test a blog this quarter.
  • We did.
  • Said blog kicked ass and was one of the best performers on the campaign.
  • It performed very well despite the fact that mainstream sites cover the same category, have larger audiences and have offline components (like print magazines).
  • If I had to attribute its success to something, it would likely be the dedication of the audience to said blog and the audience's trust in the blog's coverage.
  • Our next media plan for this client will include more blogs. This is driven by the success of the blog we tested, plus the desire to tap into audiences that haven't seen the client's message before.
  • We will likely renew our deal with the first blog, and possibly increase our commitment to them from a monetary perspective.

A few other things I want to mention...

There are quite a few media buyers who end up here for one reason or another. I have this message for them: If you're not considering advertising on blogs that deal with topics of interest to your clients and their target audiences, you're doing your client a disservice. Put down the @Plan runs and the MRI crosstabs for a sec and take a calculated chance for your clients. It will pay off. Relevance is one of the prime drivers of success in online advertising. Blogs have dedicated audiences that come back again and again to consume quality topical content. Your client wants to be associated with such editorial environments (or at least they should). Propose a small test with a blog, gauge its success, and you'll likely find it to perform particularly well.

Here's another thing...I like the concept behind BlogAds, but major advertisers are going to want to run larger size GIFs, Flash and rich media. My preference is to cut the deal directly with the person running the blog for an ad package that's more robust than what you can get through BlogAds. And I'm looking for something that's persistent, so that every person who visits the blog is exposed to the ad. That means sponsorships, locked-in positions on the home page, and possibly ads on every archive and story page.

Some words of advice to bloggers hoping to attract advertisers:


  • Place an "advertise" link somewhere on your homepage. Link this to a page that lists contact information for someone who can sell advertising on your blog. Make sure this isn't a submission form that sends an e-mail out to whoever is handling ad sales. Reason: When online media buyers are putting plans together, they're typically dealing with tight turnaround times (usually just a few days). When they find a site they want to advertise on, they want to get someone on the phone to discuss that possibility, asap.
  • Know everything you possibly can about your audience. I just got an ad proposal from a blog that was absolutely terrific - It contained a snapshot of traffic growth over several months, names of companies whose executives visited the site regularly, and plenty of other statistics that painted a picture of the audience for me.
  • Know how your blog's competitors set pricing. If your blog competes in a category with non-blogs, know what their prices are (usually available on a "rate card" linked on the site itself). Advertisers tend to have a range of CPMs (Cost Per Thousand ad impressions) that they pay to reach audiences in their particular sector. If your blog is priced too high, the advertising opportunity looks less attractive to the advertiser.
  • Offer test rates. Most advertisers haven't advertised on blogs before, and they consider blogs an unproven vehicle. If you can put together small test packages, consisting of ad runs that span 2-4 weeks and cost between $2,000 and $5,000, you'll have more success attracting advertisers. And those advertisers will likely renew once they've pulled off a successful test.
  • Don't get discouraged if media buyers say no. Most media buyers are lazy. They don't want to be bothered with smaller sites that are unproven. They're so used to buying ads on the Yahoos, MSNs and AOLs of the world that they tend to ignore niche opportunities. You'll know within a couple minutes of talking on the phone whether or not you're talking to a media buyer who is interested in blog advertising. The uninterested ones will harp on "potential reach of the site" and say "your site is too small." The interested ones will ask you questions about who your site reaches, what kind of repeat traffic you get and what ad opportunities are available to reach your audience.

I think blog advertising will be a force to be reckoned with eventually, but it's going to take some time. First, blogs need to get on the radar screens of major marketers with money to spend. Then it's going to take some time for them to engage in small-scale testing before they make serious commitments. My advice to the blog community is to be patient and to keep doing what you're doing. Content truly is king, and as blogs draw more eyeballs away from mainstream news and topical sites, the dollars will follow the eyeballs.

Posted by THespos at June 15, 2004 08:31 AM | TrackBack
Comments
All comments are property of the individual poster who left them. Everything else, copyright 2005, Tom Hespos

Great post Tom. Two other advantages to blog advertising:

-- 90% cheaper than traditional media, since blogger overheads are low or none.
-- the blogger often knows more than the average journalist about his/her beat. (Think about how many bloggers are fanatics, industry execs, Phds, JDs, etc.)

Posted by: henrycopeland at June 15, 2004 11:14 AM

"...sponsorships, locked-in positions on the home page, and possibly ads on every archive and story page."

Remember to leave some space for the *blog*.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at June 16, 2004 10:05 AM

Tom, nice post. I too am a believer that blogs are part of What's Next in marketing.

I only have one issue:

You say your clients blog "kicked ass", but...

You don't provide any hard facts about how you measure whether a blog is successful or not. Unique visitors? Clicks on an ad on the same page that provides product info?

Would love more clarification.

Posted by: Mitchell Caplan at June 21, 2004 01:39 PM

Tom:
What is a reasonable rate to charge for the ad units you are proposing? I have been outside of the online ad market for a while. Do buyers still do hybrid deals or is it strictly CPM or CPC? And what is the minimum level of unique visitors per month to get on the radar screens of the media buyers? Thanks

Posted by: Sammy James at June 22, 2004 08:18 PM

Mitchell - Unfortunately, I can't provide hard facts right now. I can't disclose the client or any hard numbers, per my post. Sorry.

Sammy - Your pricing depends on your audience. If you reach a niche, business to business audience, you don't need a tremendous audience. Even 5,000 - 10,000 uniques would be fine if your site reaches, say, a consortium of dentists or fashion buyers. If your site simply targets the general public, your audience would probably need to be bigger - at least 100,000 uniques IMHO. Context is also important. You might attract some political advertisers if your site aggregates 30,000 unique visitors a month who are of a certain political persuasion or are interested in a particular issue.

CPM deals are certainly possible. Again, it depends on who you're reaching. I'd charge upwards of a $50 CPM if my site reached cardiologists exclusively, but maybe only $20 CPM if I'm reaching doctors in general. Bulk deals can be done on a cheap CPM ($2-$3) or on CPC or CPA.

Posted by: Tom Hespos at June 23, 2004 09:08 AM

Tom:
Thanks for the response. What are your thoughts on moblogs? I don't know what the usage is like for audioblogs but I was recently introduced to a new platform that enables you to post pictures, video and text directly from a camera phone. ( http://www.textamerica.com ) I have not thought the b2c or b2b applications but this looks powerful. And at the very least, this looks like a natural fit for phone manufacturers and carriers to advertise at a premium rate.

Posted by: Sammy James at June 25, 2004 01:11 PM

Hey John,


I'm part of a new blog and rss advertising system called CrispAds.com. We've been getting some pretty good traffic on it, we've signed up quite a few blogs, and are rapidly gaining interest with advertisers. People seem to be liking our 95% flow-through to blog authors. Getting mixed reviews about our PayPal payout model however. Your thoughts?

Posted by: Cadman Chui at December 20, 2004 09:21 PM

Good post. One thing I'd like to see addressed: if you are running a blog, how do you put advertising on your site.

I know about AdSense and Blogads.com. But what about when you want to deal directly with a client? Perhaps this should be a topic for a webmasters or "blogmasters" blog, but if you could shed any light on the subject, that would be great.

Posted by: Naveen at March 6, 2005 09:08 PM

This article may have been posted laste year but it still provides some very useful insights.

Posted by: Pete Brady from Ads On Blogs at August 25, 2005 09:48 AM

THANKS for this post! I have found my blog to be an invaluable tool for marketing my book ("Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" available at Amazon.com) as well as my thoughts on the subject of the low-carb lifestyle. I haven't paid a red cent for the exposure and yet I get about 20,000 pageviews per month after being online for less than a year. It's a marketing dream-come-true and advertisers would be wise to look at the success blogs like mine are having and invest in these opportunities. THANKS again for the GREAT post!

Posted by: Jimmy Moore at December 23, 2005 04:46 PM

Levi's just launched its brand-new worldwide campaign on a Video Blog. Watch MobuzzTV's spanish show...

Posted by: roger at March 7, 2006 11:20 AM

I have a new blog. Any thoughts on making this blog attract more viewers.

The site is
www.davey-winningiseverything.blogspot.com

It is a site that will focus on Cleveland Sports and other sports as well. Your feedback would be helpful.
Thanks,
Dave

Posted by: Dave at March 29, 2006 02:59 PM

Hi Dave:

First, I'd start by posting with regular frequency. Several times a day would be nice if you can swing it and have something to say. (Don't post just for the sake of posting.)

Be sure to link everything you reference. Don't be afraid to link out to news sites and other blogs, even if they're competitive. A healthy number of inbound links will bring other blog readers to your site and will do wonders for how you're indexed in search engines.

Find relevant conversations about Cleveland sports on other blogs and hop right in to the fracas. It will help you get more established with the audience and -who knows- maybe some of the people you engage in conversation will come back to your blog to leave comments of their own.

Good luck. Ping me in a couple months and let me know how it's going.

Posted by: Tom Hespos at March 31, 2006 06:16 PM

hi people,
here's a question which seems interesting to me just wanted some more opinions on this - Advertising on Blogs or Advertising Through Blogs? First case being placing your ads on pre-existing blogs...however is there any case where a blog has been started to promote a product specifically?

Help Me!!!!!

Posted by: Niket at June 28, 2006 06:43 AM

Advertising on blogs and generally advertising on smaller sites is a tough nut to crack, personally I feel that interest first is going to have to be made to smaller sites then go to blogs. Either way I feel corporate america will have to start understanding more of the essential in finding quality advertising resources. ie, link backs, page rank, search engine saturation are all important in fascilitating companies in making intelligent business decisions. Honestly for a company to ask for this information is totally rediculus since it is accessible online for everyone, they should check the resources available and do there own comparisons to make intelligent decisions.

Posted by: Gary Golden at July 25, 2006 07:47 AM

I am the owner of a small company that makes an herbal insect repellent. In order for us to survive in the world of corporate giants we have had to rely soley on word of mouth. This has come in the form of comments by people who have used Crocodile. What is keeping us growing is this word of mouth that is gatering speed as people talk about Crocodile. For Dancing Roots blogging is our way of surviving.

Posted by: dan at August 12, 2006 08:27 AM
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