ChasNote

Flatiron Partners VC Fred Wilson talks about a new sell-side advertising marketplace for blog advertising (Fred’s blog). Advertisers post their ads at Word of Blog, and blog publishers pull down (and place on their sites) ads that are appropriate to their audiences. “And there is no fancy contextual targeting engine [eg, AdSense] working at Word of Blog” — just good old fashioned human publishers who know their readers and seek advertisers who will fit into the dialog (see my post on the endemic relationship). What a wonderful new use of the term “opt-in marketing.”

Comments:

Bill Fritter said… The model Fred is proposing isn’t it Commission Junction?

Chas Edwards said… Is CJ a platform for CPM advertising? Although Fred talks about effective CPC, it sounds to me like Word of Blog is attempting to create an exchange whereby advertisers are willing to pay for exposure in front of an audience they haven’t put through the standard paces of media planning. Instead, publishers pick the advertisers they predict will appeal to their own audiences. What’s interesting to me is that the currency of Word of Blog’s sell-side transaction is impressions rather than relatively low-risk clicks to an advertiser’s site.