Blogs as Cash Cows

You've heard the phrase "monetize your content", but have you looked at the product? The idea is to "turn your blog into a revenue stream by intelligently inserting contextual advertisements into your feed or individual posts. "feeddirect.com/rssads


Kanoodle's BrightAds and a number of other sites offer to connect you with advertisers looking to reach their customers via your content and feeds. So far, so good. Google's ads on the pages of their search results are tuned to the keywords of your search, and while they may be ads, they are not mixed in with the search results. They are also fairly relevant. If you are searching for Olive Oil, Google's Adsense doesn't come up with used cars in the sidebar.
The problem comes when the "service" inserts non-relevant ads into feeds that the subscriber chose for the content.



One can imagine entertainment headlines, prefaced with a dose of
"URGENT - WHY YOU NEED LIFE INSURANCE"
delivered direct to your desktop. Since subscribers can quickly opt out of ham-handed feeds, this may overstate the problem, but like any foot-in-the-door technique, once a salesman gets you used to a level of annoyance, and can convince the market that you will tolerate it, he will raise the level. Basic television, which used to have one advertiser per 1/2 hour segment, now has multiple ads whose total time rival that of the programing.

"Maximum Distribution = Maximized Revenue"

When biz talks to possible content providers, and to business owners who want to dish ads, the conversation doesn't turn on the needs of the end customer, but gets straight down to the real project, maximizing money. This is to be expected. Big business (particularly aspiring BigBiz) likes to pretend it is concerned about the customer, but in a lot of cases sales are a case of Caveat Emptor. If you can't protect yourself from the people who are trying to "sell" you, that's tough.

We can only hope that the insertion of non-relevant ads into feeds goes the way of the pop-up ads fiasco, where intrusive jump up ads or downloads without your express permission, have spawned pop-up blockers that smack down the nasty, in-your-face things.

(If you hate pop-ups and you haven't downloaded FireFox yet, you are missing out. FireFox has a built-in blocker. Maybe FireFox or Tivo will invent a tool that looks at the content of a feed as it loads and filters out the extraneous ads!!!)

To expect that blog owners will prove immune to the blandishments of $$$$ is asking too much. Eventually a lot of the community based openness will be lost as authors are coaxed into sponsored feeds. About all you can hope is that class acts will insist on sponsors whose products are in the interests of the audience, and that as a consumer, you will be able to tell the difference between sponsored inclusions and real content.