July 20th, 2006

Two New Blog-Centric Ad Networks

Blog-centric ad networks aren’t new. We’ve had Blogads for years now (4 years to be exact), and only in May this year, we saw BlogHer launch an ad network aimed at female bloggers. For the big boys (e.g. Boing Boing, Techcrunch, etc.), we have Federated Media.

This isn’t stopping two new ones from popping up though. So, what makes our two new (potential) entrants to this space special?

  • Performancing Partners Beta Starts
    A Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and monthly flat fee (think Blogads, but based on recommended CPM in your blog’s category) based ad network that uses images and text in their ads, with some interactivity thrown in. You can check out one of its test ad formats to see what I mean.

    Performancing aims to leverage its large and growing community of bloggers to fuel Partners, and so far, they have been taking unprecedented steps to show how much the community will count. But community isn’t going to be enough in the long term, and to my knowledge, a number of key points, such as its “unique revenue sharing model” and custom tailoring to bloggers have yet to be revealed.

    High hopes are being placed on Performancing, with its Web 2.0-style of building trust and all, so the pain of mediocrity is really going to be all the greater.

  • BlogKits Signup Launch Begins
    Another Cost Per Action (CPA) ad network, but one that asserts that every offer bloggers will look at are custom tailored for bloggers. So far, their test ads do show a level of tailoring to bloggers you won’t see with other affiliate networks (e.g. Clickbank, CJ, etc.) - which is admittedly something with strong potential if it really materialises on the advertiser’s side of things (e.g. blog-specific landing page, etc.). There also seems to be a “smart system” where your best performing merchant offers are automatically given the most air time - pushing the burden of optimizing from the blogger to the network.

    However, in direct contrast to Performancing Partners approach, BlogKits seems to be taking the relationship game the affiliate-marketing way rather than the blogger-way. Instead of opening up to the blogging community, it’s asking bloggers to sign up before having seen anything substantial about the network, e.g. offers available, potential profit, etc., and before the actual network actually opens up (it will officially open in late Summer). This is surely not the way to go for a network that claims to be “…built just for bloggers.” A Threadwatch discussion highlights this issue in further detail.

Primarily, both networks aim to leverage the CPA (Cost Per Action & Acquisition) model which has traditionally been difficult for the average blogger to succeed with. Simplification of affiliate marketing for bloggers seems to be the key here, and it sure looks like a pretty valuable key.

If you found this post useful, keep updated with future posts by subscribing to blogHelper (for free) through RSS or email.

Remember to share this post as well (if you liked it, of course): These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • del.icio.us
  • digg
  • Fark
  • Furl
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • YahooMyWeb

Posted by ZMAng

Filed under Advertising, BlogAds, BlogKits, News, Performancing Partners

4 Comments

  • 1
    Jim Kukral
    July 24th, 2006 at 8:49 am

    Thanks for the mention. I think one thing I did learn is that our “soft-lauch” was interpreted poorly by some.

    We never intended to not show bloggers what advertisers we have available. In fact, those will be shown soon enough. We just wanted to get some signups while we finished up adding more offers on the merchant side.

    However, 1,000 blogger signups and growing already have shown us that not everyone is so worried about it yet.

    But I do agree, we need to open up the doors more, give us some time! :)

  • 2
    ZMAng
    July 24th, 2006 at 11:54 am

    I’ll surely be waiting. :) There’s a lot of potential in this space, and I’ll be hoping for BlogKits to fulfill some of it.

    Author Comment
  • 3
    BlogKits - A Disappointing First Look | blogHelper
    July 28th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    […] BlogKits, one of the two blog-centric Cost Per Action (CPA) ad networks we looked at last week, released a small list of merchants and offers available two days back. Did I mention small? […]

  • 4
    James
    October 10th, 2006 at 11:21 am

    Hi,
    Apart from the CPA and adsense, are there any other options for blogger to monetize their blog?? There seems to be only few CPC ads network available for blogs…

    I am still searching for alternative at the moment. Any poiter would be good !
    Thanks
    James

Leave a Reply