Blog advertising has some inherit issues that traditional website advertising has not had to worry quite as much about.
It’s very similar to forums with returning readership that quickly grows banner blind. The ads on the blog simple don’t get noticed any longer. Sure this is the same with a normal website but since blogs tend to have returning users the users are even more use to ignoring the blog’s ads.
One solution is to not use traditional advertising. Bloggers would simply get paid to put advertisements in their content.
But this could get ugly (in fact it has already with some not well planned start-ups).
The whole idea of a blog is to provide a personal touch and an uncorrupted opinion (at least thats what many idealists like myself hope).
- If bloggers start getting paid to post unrelated information or advertisements in their blog then it kills the theme of the blog and it simply starts to look like a garbage blog. Readers hate it and Advertisers lose the ability to touch a faithful readership around a given niche.
- Also if bloggers start posting false reviews (forced positives as I like to call them) of products, services, or websites the trust in that blog is gone. Or worse the forced positives stay hidden and readers do not even know the lies being posted by the blogger they read or take advice from.
To us these are simply unacceptable problems. Many bloggers like us can not accept being involved with networks that ignore these problems. Spontent was created to address these issues in Phase II.
With Phase I we are first working to build a group of bloggers, webmasters, and advertisers that have high quality sites and blogs that rank well, and post quality information.
Do you agree with our stance on hidden forced positive advertisements and unrelated in content advertisements junking up blogs?
What do you think should be done? Who is ready for a change and a chance to make REAL money posting to their blogs? If advertisers know they’re getting quality who’s to say a good post or truthful review from a high ranking, high page rank, quality blog isn’t worth $20..$50..$100..or more… the possibilities are endless!
