Money Changes Everything

Business Week on the Business Of Blogging:

Now advertisers are realizing there is a market emerging in the blogosphere. Already, the growth in regular online advertising, estimated to be about 35% this year, will far outpace the spending increases for any other sector of the media world. Add to all this the fact that about 11% of Internet users today are inveterate blog readers, and the blogging scene starts to get mighty compelling for marketers.

Don't expect a repeat of the dot-com rush that inflated the Web bubble of the late 1990s. "This is a long game, with lots of ebbs and flows," says Henry Copeland, founder of media-buying firm BlogAds. Blogging isn't about to lead to vast wealth anytime soon, says Copeland, but he does expect "more money to [flow to] more authors as smart advertisers bypass publishers and pay authors directly for their audiences." BlogAds is placing ads on 50 to 100 blogs a day for up to 20 advertisers, including Sharp Electronics Corp. and Walt Disney Co. Just six months ago, the firm served 20 blogs for about 10 advertisers.

The big question; will the BlogAds model continue to click now that the elections are over and blog traffic - at megablogs like Powerline as well as lowly operations like Shot In The Dark - is waaaaay off?

It was interesting; I made nearly $200 in the weeks before the election; I haven't moved a single ad in the month since.

Still, the story is developing - much more than I'd thought it would in the first year and a half that I ran this blog.

Posted by Mitch at December 9, 2004 01:23 AM | TrackBack