If blogging is so pervasive, how much traffic do blogs attract? According to ComScore Media Metrix, the top four blogs - BlogSpot, Typepad, Blogrolling, and Blogger - reach about 5.5 million people per month. Google's BlogSpot, which shows consumers how to create their own blogs, has grown 56 percent over the past six months. Technorati, a company that provides search and notification services for active content on the Web, monitors more than 3 million Web logs. Microsoft's MSN has said that blogging, blog searches, and links to blogs will be integrated into the search product it's creating.
Blog networks made up of hundreds of individual blogs have also entered the scene. Alwaysonnetwork.com is an ad-supported blogging network, as is Weblogs, a blog network created by Jason Calacanis, founder of the now defunct Silicon Alley Reporter. One of the largest Web log ad networks, Blogads, enables marketers to place ads on some 500 blogs. They're blogs such as Instapundit, Politicalpundit, Talkingpointsmemo, Dailykos, Littlegreenfootballs, and Atrios. Blogads sells not on a cost-per-thousand basis but on a sponsorship model, according to its founder, Henry Copeland, who has witnessed dramatic growth in the blogosphere in the past two years.
Take Talkingpointsmemo, for example. Copeland says that two years ago, the political blog had about 300,000 page impressions per month. Now it racks up nearly 4 million per month, "the size of a decent-size magazine," Copeland notes. And therein lies the untapped potential of blogs - huge audiences of typically hard-to-reach people.
