Anita, like me, has ads on her site.  The ads bring her a little income to help defray the cost of business, maybe even pay for a nice dinner out.  Her ads are pretty targeted.  Mine are keyword-driven.  Bottom line ... we accept ads on our blogs and our readers, generally accept them too.

To be sure, most blog writers do not make any money, and those who do often make only enough to pay their site fees. There are now at least 21.5 million Web logs worldwide, according to Technorati, a company that tracks blog postings. Many blogs remain primarily personal postings that Internet users pursue purely because of their own interests.

Still, large numbers of online writers are interested in making money. -- NYT article "As Corporate Ad Money Flows Their Way, Bloggers Risk Their Rebel Reputation"

True blogs are in many ways still the rebels of the Internet.  Funny, though, that's why a lot of them are popular.  Hmm.  I don't think I'd call myself a rebel, but I certainly try to speak my mind (I sense Fred cringing at that).  I think that might be the biggest challenge for advertisers to swallow.  Bloggers don't stay "on message".  Bloggers, generally, don't do well with being told what they can't say ... that will generally get blogged and that looks even worse.

Let's look at the other side of the coin.  Blogs are now the place to get expert analysis.  Blogs are the place to read what some of the top thinkers in virtually any industry are saying about a topic or issue.  Makes perfect sense to advertise on a blog.  Bloggers who have a niche, say business or marketing, are great for related ads.  Generalists might do better with keyword ads.  The bottom line though, is that blogs are a virtually untapped advertising market.  2005, blogs go mainstream.  2006 ... blogs become vehicles for income.

Who's ready?

Technorati Tags : online+advertising, Anita+Campbell, professional+blogging, blog+advertising

Neville talks about an interesting, really cool IMHO, thing the U.K. supermarket chain Tesco is doing.  Not only are they sending out traditional e-mail marketing e-mails to customers (on the quantity or quality concept) they have created a "deal of the day" RSS feed.  Now, this rocks.  Frankly, I'd love to get my store flier in RSS.  Maybe, the just before the end of the day ... how about a quick recipe for an easydinner and oh ... here are the ingredients ... oh and severalof them are on a special web-recipe sale. How about that.

From Neville:

So my prediction is - more RSS feeds by consumer-focused businesses such as supermarkets. It's getting easier for people to use RSS (often without realizing it) and will get easier still as more businesses offer information via RSS, as simpler ways of describing it emerge (like ' live bookmarks ,' for instance), and as it becomes ever more easier to get the information offered via RSS. (Related development: expect more advertising in RSS.)

It's the heir to the direct marketing throne.

There is an ongoing discussion about whether Flickr (and related sites) should "give back to its users".  Give them a little bonus, a little slice of the ad revenue.  It comes down to controlling your content and being able to leverage your creativity to your benefit, not Yahoo's or Google's.  Qumana has been driven, almost from the beginning of what is now Qumana the application, by blogging and professional blogging (yours truly).  I have no idea how many hundreds (thousands?) of posts I've cranked out through this baby.  We've gone through several potential business models for Qumana.  As you know, now, that we are going to earn our revenue through our ad network AdGenta .  What is it all about?  This quote below sums it up:

Michael Parekh may be right when he suggests that the Web 2.0 companies that find a way to share their revenues with their users will have the best chance of becoming Web 3.0 companies.

Yeah, we're sharing with the bloggers.  We don't make money unless you do so we're pretty darn driven for you to make money.  I think this is why Qumana is already moving to Web 2.5 from 2.0.  We're developing the platform and the model for all of us to make money, together.

It's been a not-so-secret secret for a couple of months now - the new-and-improved Qumana. It's finally here.

This version of Qumana is not just about easy blogging anymore - it's about making money. For you. This new Qumana lets you insert post-centric, keyword-driven ads into your post with one click.

We're extremely excited about this. We've been testing the process for months, you've seen the ads in our posts for sure. We've got it down.

Qumana 2.0 brings together advertising and blogs in a new way:

• The ads are images, so they flow from blog to RSS to e-mail seamlessly.
• The ads are keyword-driven, so they don't conflict with contextual ad programs.
• You choose the keywords, so you can decide which ads are best for your readers - not some computer algorithm.
• You can track the clicks by ad - that's right, you can watch to see which keywords are working out for you simply by tagging your ads with a title you can then see in your stats.
• You can change the look of your ad: the colours, the text, the size. Each time - or save your preferences.
• You can preview your ad before you insert it - and we tell you if your keyword does not match any ads.
• You don't have to insert ads in every post. You decide. You can even put in more than one, if you wanted.
• You can move the ad, just like an image, anywhere inside your post.

Inserting an ad with Qumana is as simple as one click.

This is one ad, for "mp3" and one on "dogs" - see how I've changed the look of the ad? You can go from simple to detailed, depending on how your blog looks. The control is in your court - each and every time.

New Features in Qumana v 2.0

Qumana has stayed simple, elegant, and easy to use - it's just more powerful now.

We've also listened to what you want, and offer:

• post-centric keyword-based ad insertion
• ability to insert HTML
• better functionality with WordPress and Blogger platforms
• improved old post editing
• a new-and-improved website with more information, and easier to find Help
• a new DropPad design
• better drag & drop from Firefox
• post to email (ads & images too!) with our integrated SMTP server

Check out our new website - it's full of all the info you need, a great tour, and easy-to-use help information to get you started with Qumana - and to start earning money!

So, here's your chance to start using Qumana - to set yourself free from blog platfrom restrictions, from web browsers, and from restrictive ad programs.

Download and install Qumana. Sign up for an account at AdGenta.com, Qumana's own ad network. Approval is automatic, so you can be putting ads into your posts in minutes. We want to see you make money - you can blog about it. Say what you want. No restrictions.

Thanks to everyone for continued support and encouragement! We listened - try it yourself and see the difference!

Our look at advertising and opinions therein from the Qumana Survey concludes with a comparison of advertising types. In general, there are two main ways to generate blog advertisements: contextual and keyword-based.

Contextual advertisements are computer-driven. A computer will scan your post and/or your entire blog page to determine what the post is about and which ads would best suit it. In a contextual world, you are completely dependent on how well the computer can determine what you are saying and in providing ads based on that content only.

Keyword-based advertisements are people-driven. Bloggers write their posts then determine which keywords best describe what they have written OR which keywords would be most attractive to their readers. And there you spot the difference: the power of the human brain. Our knowledge and insight are, at least for now, far superior at determining the best ads to place. We can choose to insert ads about blogs when we write about blogging - or we could insert ads about podcasting, as something we think our readers would like.

Without this description or influence, we asked our users which way would be easiest to manage ads. 44% wanted to be a part of a program to insert contextual ads on the blog, and 8% wanted the same for the RSS feed. If we jump from contextual ads to keyword-based ads, 33% showed interest in the ability to manually insert ads of their choice.

According to our survey, 70% of our users (n=71) believe that contextual advertisements are more effective. The vast majority of advertising programs are based on contextual algorithms, but people are not as satisfied as they would like to be. In fact, we know that more than half of you are really not satisfied with current ad programs. So, maybe contextual advertising programs are not as effective as we believe them to be, and don't fit all blogs or all use cases.

n=66

If we look at the patterns of this entire survey, we know that people don't make much money from their blogs... but want to. Some don't use blog advertisements programs... but want to. People find advertising programs complicated, and need help. And bloggers have yet to see the return from RSS advertisements.

Here's what I think. Contextual ads are just not cutting it. If you write a niche topic, you have a better chance of getting some good ads on your blog. Even with that, you're not likely to see great ads in your feed. RSS advertising is stagnant - there is not enough content per post to determine the best ads, and they are too obtrusive and restrictive to earn any return from them.

The best of both worlds would be to use both keyword and contextual ad programs. While 39% of our users would like contextual ads only, a clear 47% would like both contextual and keyword-based ads. Right now, that's possible with some ad programs. It depends on how restrictive the terms of service are - which means more work for bloggers to figure this out.

n=74

Bloggers are cut in by many restrictions with advertising programs. They need to know where their blog templates are, and how to modify them. They need to know HTML. They have to spend hours, if not days, going back to modify the ad blocks. They need to be approved for RSS ads. And they cannot control which ads get displayed from major contextual ad programs.

The ads from major blog advertising programs are either connected with every post (or page) or are turned off - there is no happy medium to decide when and where the ads go. The on/off switch is a concept that just doesn't cut it anymore.

Blog advertising needs a change. And that change is coming.

69% of our users would be interested in using Qumana to insert advertisements. That day is coming. And that day is tomorrow...

Related Survey posts:

On Bloggers
The Use of RSS
Use of Advertising by Bloggers
Blog Advertising Earnings
Opinions on Blog Advertising

Technorati Tags: qumana, advertising, blogs, blogging, money, onlineadvertising, adgenta

We're almost at the end of our analysis of the Qumana Survey. I will be talking about advertising in blogs for 2 more posts today, just so I can break up the topics, and Tris will be sharing some great feedback on Qumana itself.

This post will focus on how our users feel about blog advertising in general - do they like it, do they care, why is it such a hot topic.

n=79

According to our survey, 94% of you read blogs that include advertisements. I would expect that it would be difficult to find blogs that don't have advertisements on them in some form or another, so this makes sense. It also says that there are very few people out there who would take the trouble to find blogs that are ad free, regardless of their opinions of online advertising.

When we look at this from a broader perspective, it shows a general acceptance, or mere tolerance, in some cases, of advertising and its presence in and on blogs. This question does show that advertising is pervading the blogosphere, and that its value to readers and bloggers is increasing. An interesting note here is on value. People tell us, as we'll see later, that ads provide contextual value to content, rather than detracting from it.

n=79

I decided to ask specifically if people were in the least annoyed by advertising in blogs - specifically ads that flow through to RSS, which has been a hot topic out there.

Well, a good 55% of our users think it perfectly fine to insert ads in RSS, 25% don't think it's good, and 20% simply don't care. We know from a previous post that 38% of our users don't like blog advertisements at all, so this is not a bad proportion. Somewhat inconsistent, but showing a more positive figure.

It's not enough just to say "do you think it ok to include ads", so we followed up with an open-ended question asking people to share these opinions.

Although you might think from the above question that people simple didn't like seeing ads in blogs, we have some clear reasons for this opinion. The two biggest complaints are the fact that ads are simply not relevant - even those that are contextual! - and that they create a cluttered look when placed all over the blog and in every single post at the bottom in RSS.

So, based on this question we can come up with an optimal ad program:

• uses text ads, not images or flashy animations
• is unobtrusively placed
• does not pop up anything
• goes into RSS and the blog
• has control for where you place the ads
• lets you place ads in some posts and not others
• is very relevant to the post (most important!)

I think we will find that advertisements have a greater opportunity to provide value online, and especially in blogs, than in any other context. Unlike magazines or television, we do not have to generalize our advertisements, and can be more specific with demographic and psychographic information. Blogs epitomize niche trends far more than we are currently seeing with the segregation of television channels.

Advertisements that are displayed with tact and are right on topic, or provide value with complementary information, will not only be tolerated, but appreciated. So, the task at hand is to provide a way for bloggers to ensure their ads meet the demands of their readers.

All we can say... stay tuned for tomorrow.

Related Survey posts:

On Bloggers
The Use of RSS
Use of Advertising by Bloggers
Blog Advertising Earnings

Technorati Tags: qumana, survey, blogs, blogging, advertising,

• tech.memeorandum @ 8-50 AM ET, October 6, 2005
• Micro Persuasion- AOL Buys Weblogs Inc. - Report
• TechCrunch » AOL Acquires Weblog, Inc.
• PaidContent.org- October 05, 2005 Archives
• One By One

For me it's not the money.  It's not, wow Jason made a killing.  It's that blogs are now hot media properties.  AOL doesn't buy online properties just to have domain names or even the content, per se.  It's the advertising potential, it's the market reach.  Weblogs Inc. has some of the hottest blogs out there.  Many of them are on my must read list.  Blog-vertising has now reached a whole new level.  A level where blogs should now be recognized as the marketing force they truly are.  Think about it, where would you rather advertise, a general site where you might hit the target you want, or a site with an engaged, focused niche audience?  Yeah I thought so.  Here's an example close to home (like my home), I just started a blog about fine writing instruments, a pen blog.  Granted it doesn't have a large audience, yet.  But think about who is going to read this site.  Much to the amazement of some of my friends, dropping over $100 on a nice pen isn't outlandish to me.  I have my eye on some multi-hundred ones as well.  That's a pretty darn good market for advertising.  And not just pens, but other related items, paper, inks and expand to things this demographic might also like single-malt Scotch, cigars, or watches.  See?  AOL has purchased a huge potential market.  Gadget freaks, parents, techies, car nuts heck probably everyone would find a blog that they are interested.  Targeted advertising at its best.

The Qumana Survey delved into the topic of advertising in quite some depth. Given the amount, and depth, of information, we'll likely get about 3 good posts out of it, all with some great insight into people's perspectives on advertising and their participation therein.

This first post will look at the presence and use of advertising by bloggers.

(n=89)

Out of a 89 respondents, only 33 people participate in advertising programs of any sort, and of those, only 7 knowingly insert advertisements into their feeds.

Analyzing the data further, those most likely to be participants in advertising programs were more likely to write on 3 or more blogs and to be more active in the blogosphere for greater than 6 months - this isupports the premise that experienced bloggers are more likely to want to earn revenue, at least in part, for their efforts.

(n=33)

By far, participants indicated use of the AdSense program most often to earn revenue from their blogs. There are a number of bloggers, though, who use multiple programs. There is a small proportion of bloggers using two or more advertising programs to maximize their earning potential.

It is clear that AdSense currently offers the most comprehensive advertising program to bloggers. However, as we see from our follow up question, most bloggers are only taking advantage of blog-centric advertising, those ads that appear on the site only. This does limit some earning potential that could be had from RSS-enabled ads, but it could also spell, for some, frustration with RSS-advertisements: either a dislike for RSS ads in general (which we cover later) or for the performance of said advertisements. For example, I have tried the AdSense for Feeds program with very little success, and therefore disabled it.

Whether these programs are successfully generating revenue for bloggers is not a topic of this post- but rather one to be examined in a later post (since we did ask some questions in this area).

Bloggers not participating in Advertising programs

When you examine the flip side of those who choose not to participate in advertising, you see a drastic reduction in number of blogs supported - the vast majority of those indicating this preference had 1 to 2 blogs, although some have 3 to 5. Where we see the greatest variance is in length of time blogging - here, we see a fairly even distribution of bloggers of all experience levels. This tells me that participating in advertising programs is an informed choice.

(n=50)

There are some bloggers, around 20 in our survey, who choose not to participate in blog advertising due to a dislike of advertising. Others not participating in advertising programs had other reasons, the strongest being the belief that their blogs will not make money. These bloggers have either no faith in the advertising programs, or feel their blogs are too small to make money.

I think it's a combination of the two. For example, one serious barrier to trial is the high payout minimum for programs such as Google AdSense. This large figure, usually over $100, prohibits bloggers from testing the waters, so to speak, because any revenue they do accrue will not be paid to them, and this could frustrate bloggers from spending the time to tweak their ads for greater earnings.

34% of bloggers who don't participate in advertising do intend to sign up for an advertising program of some sort, and a high proportion of those have requested assistance - this strongly affirms that a proportion of bloggers just don't know how to place advertising on their blogs. This relates, in part, to the difficulty in setting up blog-centric advertising programs like AdSense, which require you to know how to edit your template to insert the proper code to generate the ads.

This knowledge of editing templates and such is far beyond that which we will see later from experienced bloggers - in future, experienced bloggers will not necessarily be those geeks who know about blogging, but those people who are good at writing and interacting with people. Web 2.0 is characterized by tools that are intended to make publishing simple - such simplifications will take power away from those geeks who once ruled the Internet domain.

----

Our next posts will follow with the earnings rate in blogs and finally with the opinon of advertising in blogs, which can be quite a hot topic.

Related posts:

Blogging Survey - On Bloggers
Blogging Survey - The Use of RSS

Technorati Tags: qumana, blogging, survey, advertising, blogads, adsense, RSS advertising, problogging, blog-centric ads