The Praized Blog

John Batelle has posted part three of a four-part post on conversational media over on Searchblog that caught my eye. I linked to the first part here a while ago, where I, uh, proclaimed it was all “about economics (ad revenue) vs. relevance (interactivity/user content).”. Still applies. But back to part three, it’s a very long post that at first explains the origins of Federated Media, and how scale, quality and safety are the three pillars of this new enterprise that groups quality blogs/ conversations and intermediates them with advertisers. He goes on to show how Wired magazine clued into the fact that advertisers want to join in and be part of the conversation with their readers, and how later Adsense made strides harnessing many advertiser messages and relevancy using their algorithms. Sidenote, the BoingBoing blog asks its readers if ads are ok. Coincidentally, I did the same thing two years ago for MoCo Loco in a post called… “Relevance vs. Economics” and got the same answer from readers (yes, if the ads are relevant). And then examples of advertisers that actively participated in conversations with their ad concepts and succeeded. All superlative examples of relevancy. There’s a lot to chew on, but in essence Batelle sums it up nicely by saying “when an [blog] author approves a company to advertise on his or her site, they are, in essence, inviting the company to join that sites’ conversation.”… ie., and stay if you have something relevant to say.

What it means: What isn’t explicit in the Searchblog post is that this can all work because quality blogs have brands of their own, they are acutely aware of the relevancy:economics equation. There are now 65 million blogs out there, blogs are literally you and me, the brand is us. Innately, we all know that relevancy is the only real currency in the conversational economy. It’s a delicate balance blogger and advertiser, ignore it at your peril.

Full disclosure: MoCo Loco, thus the author of this post, is a member of the Federated Media Graphic Arts Federation.

Read in this month’s Business 2.0:

“This spring Saturn is looking to roll out a nationwide version of an online ad for its new Aura sedan built on Google Earth technology. Web users don’t have to download the mapping software; they just watch as the screen zooms all the way down from space into the nearest Saturn dealership - located by their IP address - where a salesman offers them a test-drive. A beta version of the ad, targeted at just six U.S. cities, received millions of click-throughs, according to Gokul Rajaram, product management director for Google AdSense. (You can view this 3-d ad here.)”

“It also resulted in more than 1,000 requests for a test-drive - which prompted Saturn’s ad agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, to start inventing campaigns for its other clients using Google Earth. “Every retail chain will eventually do this,” says Jeff Goodby, co-founder of the San Francisco-based agency.”

“Microsoft has already rolled out ads inside Virtual Earth 3D for major sponsors like Fox and Nissan. Users will soon be able to zoom through virtual versions of real cities with billboards advertising local hotels, restaurants, or day trips.”

What it means: this is really cool but it’s still a very static execution, i.e. more like a TV ad online. The real difference is the IP targetting. I’m sure they’ve done the ads that way to avoid the download problem (you need to install a software in order to use both MSN & Google’s services). But in this case, you can’t really use the service at its fullest (driving directions, etc.). The real 3D mapping killer-app (for advertising) will happen when you don’t have to download anything to navigate in these virtual worlds.