ChasNote

Yesterday I came across a few articles covering the new “Techmeme Sponsored Posts” — ads populated with content from the sponsor’s RSS feed. (Here’s coverage at the Business 2.0 Blog and at BuzzMachine.)

I absolutely love this concept. It’s the opposite of what Google recommends for its CPC advertisers (that is, don’t put too much info in your ads or Google will pull them out of rotation because of poor click-through performance). It’s advertisers adding value to content sites by contributing real, live content.

From the page thanking the first three sponsors, I see that they are oDesk, SocialText and Wink, but I can’t see them on the right side of Techmeme. [Correction: The ads are up and running on the right side of the Techmeme home page.] Meanwhile, also on Monday, Symantec launched their own RSS ads, refreshed with content from Symantec’s Security Response Weblog, on Techdirt (the box at the upper right of the homepage) and on comments pages in the tech section of Digg.

Shame on us for not getting the news out faster!

More on the Facebook whoopla at PaidContent: “Instead of the response from founder Mark Zuckerburg earlier this week telling people to calm down and offering vague assurances that complaints were being heard, it sounds like realization may finally have seeped in that top-down doesn’t always work even when the features are cool.” A good lesson for every business (an ad-supported media business or otherwise) with a revenue stream that depends on a loyal audience.

“How Not To Get Kids To Read Magazines” from Techdirt: Require them to download special software so that they can receive a free copy of the magazine via email:

“Of course, this comes as the very generation they’re targeting is becoming less reliant on email, preferring things like ’sitemail,’ instant messaging and text messaging as modes of communication. Going to email seems like a strategy from a decade ago. These days, college students are focused on communities: things like MySpace and Facebook. That is, they want to interact with their content, not just have it delivered…. The reason they have to install special software is so that the magazine looks like a traditional paper magazine, basically taking away just about all of the benefit for the magazine to go online. Readers can’t show others the content, or discuss the content. It basically blocks the magazine off — not just by adding hurdles to actually read it (even though it’s supposed to be free!), but by making it difficult to actually use it.” [My emphasis.]

MediaPost columnist Mark Naples took a look at FM’s “metaweblog” concept in today’s edition.

“Federated Media is among the companies that have designed a solution that could perhaps remedy this for blogs and their advocates. Federated’s metablogs offer value to three constituencies. One constituency value set is directed to the readers who want a human editor to sift through dozens of selected content sources online & to surface the essential articles each day. A second constituency value set is directed toward advertisers who want their brands associated with the leading online voices, all through one place buying opportunity. A third is directed toward the individual weblog authors, who get the opportunity to forge relationships with new readers.

I know that other blog aggregators have created similar systems. But Federated Media seems to have developed something that thinks it through more comprehensively from the buy side, the sell side, and the reader’s side all at once.”

Thanks for the plug, Mark!

Research firm PQ Media is out with a report on ad spending in weblogs, podcasts, RSS and the rest of the “social media” platforms (from MediaPost). Is it me, or has MediaPost devised some annoying app that prevents cutting and pasting from their articles? In lieu of quoting the article…. PQ Media estimates 2006 spending will be $49.8MM, up from $20.4MM in 2005. Most of the 2005 spending — $16.6MM — was for advertising on blogs, which the report calls “the most mature of the user-generated online media segments.”

iMedia just published their 2nd installment of its “Ad Networks Crib Sheet” round up. Here’s the summary on Federate Media.

Back in September, Steve Hall at AdRants wrote about an odd viral campaign for a Dutch newspaper (AdRants post). Steve didn’t know what the Dutch newspaper’s message was, but he called the “viral” part a success — because the editors at Boing Boing linked to the story. Ie, edit coverage by Boing Boing equals a viral home run.

Today, Boing Boing editor Xeni Jardin kicked off another viral success story (Xeni’s post), this time for a brand that wasn’t pulling zany stunts in order to “go viral”:

“I haven’t done this before, but wanted to share a personal anecdote involving one of Boing Boing’s sponsors — Quikbook.com. Recently, I needed to find a hotel room in a *totally* sold out city at the last minute. I had no luck with the travel websites and bucket shops I usually turn to for hotel booking. Just when it looked like a $900/night janitor’s closet at the Podunk Craquehaus was my only option, I remembered the Quikbook ad on Boing Boing. I clicked tentatively, ended up booking a great room at an impossibly sold-out upscale hipster property — at a really nice discount off the rack rate. I’m absolutely planning to use them again. Also, Quikbook smells nice and has great hair.”

Unlike most wanna-be viral campaigns, Quikbook used plain old advertising. They did make an effort to let Boing Boing’s readers — an audience which, obviously enough, includes the site’s 4 editors — know that their ad didn’t end up on the site by accident: They played off Boing Boing’s tagline by referring to themselves as “A directory of wonderful hotels.” Not exactly a ground-breaking marketing tactic, but rather one that has been working wonders for over 50 years.

Nor did they disrepect the journalists at Boing Boing with requests for editorial coverage in exchange for ad dollars. They just bought an ad on the site and used the real estate to tell Boing Boing readers exactly what they do. No viral gimmicks and no sleazy tactics.

Meanwhile, Quikbook’s web servers are overheating right now because Xeni pointed the 2 million people who read Boing Boing (and another 1.3 million who subscribe to Boing Boing’s feed) to their site with an unsolicited rave review.

(Disclosure: Federated Media, my employer, handles ads sales & other business stuff for Boing Boing.)

Last week Gadgetopia (a site associated with Federated Media) polled its 100,000 readers. The skew toward tech professionals (53% IT pros or engineers) and tech influencers (91% are asked by friends & colleagues for advice about technology) isn’t surprising, though it is a bit more pronounced than I guessed going into the study. More impressive to me, though, is the loyalty among these readers: 77% read the site at least once a day, 77% have the site bookmarked, and 70% subscribe to the site’s RSS feed.

This blog-affinity business (see ChasNote 10/26/05) is starting to look like a trend!

ChasNote is ready to plug into your very own news aggregator! I haven’t yet figured out how to post one of those fancy orange buttons on the site, but click here for the ChasNote RSS feed. Or type “http://chasnote.com/wp-rss2.php” into your RSS reader. (Thanks, Andre!)

Venture capitalist Roger McNamee on the changing dynamics for content creators: “Media was dominated by distributors who dictated how, where and when we would get content. Now technology has taken media from being location-tied, and lessened the control of distribution — content owners can be independent of distribution operators,” (SmartMoney). This explains the rising influence of top-tier bloggers, those with authoritative voices and high influence among their audiences. But this isn’t a wholly new dynamic. Think of the leverage held by rockstar DJs (eg, Howard Stern), news anchors (eg, Bill O’Reilly) or newspaper columnists (eg, Walt Mossberg).