Your Audience - It's the Cream

CNN Money, by way of Business 2.0, has a lengthy look at the “Blogging for Dollars” movement. While the piece does quite a bit of research, it won’t be of much help to those of us not at the top of the blogging game - not that it’s not worth a read.The one thing that seems most salient, regardless of the size of your readership, is the nature of the relationship you have with them as compared to the traditional media outlets. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s meaningless - you’ve got something many, many large corporations with all sorts of money can’t muster all that easily on their own.

At the same time, advertisers--shunning old-line media in favor of the Web--are discovering the unique power of blogs. Blogs offer a personal touch in the mediascape; small sites have become our guides to a content-saturated world. As such, their recommendations are highly valued by readers--which naturally has made advertisers take notice. In recent months, big-name companies like Banana Republic and Coca-Cola (Charts) have for the first time run campaigns on blogs, in the belief that blog communities often consist of concentrated numbers of the passionate and influential people all marketers want to reach. Intel bought its first blog ad in March; now all its ads run on blogs as well as traditional outlets. Says Thom Campbell, head of media strategy for Intel (Charts), "The audience on blogs is the cream of the crop."

Business 2.0: Blogging for Dollars - September 1, 2006

technorati tags:blogging, monetization