Part 1 - The Balance

After posting about the CBS coverage of President Clinton's book and the subsequent drive for affiliate revenue by the network, I've begun to think a lot about the blog medium and how advertising can live within it without ticking off readers. Specifically, whether or not there was "a line" that blogs or online publishers needed to stay on one side of before people who viewed their content would think they weren't honest any longer.

After a little bit of searching this evening, some instant messaging, and a telephone call to Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org, my conclusion is....maybe.

While that's probably not the answer you were expecting (or perhaps it was?), it's where it all ends up. The reason: a lot of people have written their opinions, and many of them have very valid points that, as an objective party, I could agree with.

The first item I found on the topic was this post by Jason Calacanis over at his weblog. In it, Calacanis responds to some critical comments that Jeremy Johnson made about a post he saw on Engadget that had a huge amount of blank space in the post column, and a ton of links, navigation, et al on the right side. Johnson is right about the whitespace issue, as it's something that even this design at The Media Drop has. It's something I've thought about, but in order to maintain a certain amount of consistency on my pages, I've kept it. this page on PC Mag's site. (Thanks to Jason for the correction in the comments section)

So what's interesting with regard to advertising and "whitespace," you ask? Well, Johnson starts off his post with "No one's advertising on the web anymore?" So is it that the navbar needs to be adjusted, or that the content needs to flow a little more and perhaps take up some of that space with advertising or some other bit of information? [related: Steve Hall over at Adrants fills space underneath individual posts with sponsored links, recent posts, and other nav/button content]

[update]I had originally posted this after making a big mistake while reading Johnson's post, thinking he was talking about Engadget's site. Just goes to show you that even after spending over an hour working on something, one little mixup and not re-reading what you used as a source can throw everything off kilter. Fortunately, the point is still valid. The PC Mag link has an overwhelming amount of information below the article itself, including cross links, ads for their print version, et al. However, Calacanis states in the comments "Engadget.com i think would have great design as far as he is concerned since we have a high content to "junk" ratio. :-)" He's right - the content/junk ratio is in his favor. But at what cost with nav links that are irrelevant in some cases. I like having a consistent front page and individual post "look and feel," but I'm doing two things there: a> causing a lot more page load time than necessary, which includes extra bandwidth I don't need to use and underutilizing that whitespace below my individual posts before the need for scrolling. And remember what Jeremy Johnson said about the whitespace - "I thought no one scrolled anyways?"[/update]

Calacanis continues his post and informs us about some changes to come at Weblogs, Inc. sites.

As we work on the new design we’re trying to actually remove many of the features and noise from the top level. We’re also trying to have a minimal amount of advertising—like two, maybe three advertisers per page.

Sure, we’ll loose [sic] some of the .25 or .50 per click advertising, sure we won’t have all the crazy navigation up top, but I think at the end of the day people want to look at something—well—pretty.

True - users do want to see a visually pleasing website, but they don't want to have a lack of navigation, inability to search a site, etc. So it's finding the "happy place," in a way, that is the key here. Also, I don't see a blatant amount of advertising on the Weblogs, Inc. sites, so I'm not sure how much revenue Calacanis is really losing, at least in the present design.

Part 2 - In-Post Advertising

You see, some sites put “advertisement” right up the top, which is great, but other put it a tiny font. Regardless of the size, as you page down they look more and more like blog posts rather then ads, and with the advertisement warning way up top most readers wouldn’t know. The ads are written like blogs posts on purpose—this is very slick.

I'll have to disagree a little bit with Calacanis on this point, as I think most blog writers that have advertising are pretty clear about what is advertising and what isn't. Quite a few blogs have Google AdSense advertising, which is pretty self evident. Sites like MetaFilter have textads clearly labeled as well. As for the items that look like blog posts, those *do* exist. The Weblogs, Inc. sites that have the network's standard template have "third post" advertising, which has a different color (as mentioned as a suggestion by JC in his post) background, and has the word "Advertisement" on the right hand side. I think the concern discussed in the quote above is with posts like this one on Rafat Ali's PaidContent.org site. Other sites have put these "advertisements" at the top of their blog pages for a day or two here and there, sometimes when they are related to conferences and such, in order to draw attention to any reader on the site.

A few things here - just one paragraph earlier, JC had stated that "Users are smart… very smart in fact." - isn't that kind of contrary to the fact that some sites have ads in their blog posts, confusing readers? I'd have to say that most readers, especially those on a highly targeted site like Ali's, would know exactly what they were reading. Especially since he makes a point of saying that it is a "Sponsor Post" that he's doing once a day. I'll come out and say that if bloggers that are looking for any credibility long-term are posting advertisements and aren't being upfront about what posts are ads won't last very long, or at least won't "lure" as many people who don't see what is going on.

With regard to the "Sponsor Post" on PaidContent.org - I was curious about it, so I got in touch with Rafat Ali this evening via telephone, and he gave me some details on it. Namely, that the "advertisement" was put in there in order to monetize the RSS feeds that were being read for his site. Think about it - we're all shifting towards a lot more "feed reading" and a lot less direct visiting of sites than we did one year ago. It's a time issue, mostly - but even so, this gives Ali the ability to a> open up a new revenue opportunity and b> perhaps take in some revenue against the bandwidth his feed takes up. We talked a little bit about the advertisements inline with the posts, and he said he hadn't recieved any negative comments on it.

A little later, I remembered that Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion had posted about the ads in the RSS feeds a bit back (May 25th, specifically). When describing Ali's site, Rubel stated that "[PaidContent.org] is a micro-publishing model worth following. It is a living case study that represents the future of media." Now some of you not in marketing or public relations might have differing opinions, but say what you want - people in PR usually have a decent eye for "tastemaking," as it were.

Okay - getting back on track - I ended up with a lot of questions in my mind after analyzing a lot of data. Perhaps getting some answers will form some more clarity and allow for some battle plans to be drawn up.

• Is it okay for bloggers to put links - just like the one CBS did - into their entries when referring to books, movies, or music items on a site like Amazon.com?


• If ads are put in post-format in the post column, are they taboo no matter what?


• If ads in post form are okay, is it as easy as putting "advertisement" in the header, or does something else have to be done?


• Even though banners have been reviled in the past for inundating web surfers, would they be better used in between posts on a periodic basis, such as on Gothamist.


• On a site like mine, there would absolutely be the possibility of a post that was critical or full of praise to a media outlet who might also be an advertiser. While many bloggers, including myself, would be comfortable doing so as far as journalism goes, I'm not sure that blog readers would believe it was transparent enough.

Of course, as this post has gotten longer tonight, I've found/created more and more points to discuss - many more than would fit into one post. Perhaps this could stand as the beginning to a discussion about this topic. I really hope to hear what you, the blogger - or you, the reader, have to say about this. Feel free to drop me a line via email if you don't want to post a comment or put up your own blog entry.

And, as always, thanks for reading!

[ed: This post has been edited from its original form. Strikethrough has been left in to enable clarity on any other concerns readers might have, and titles were added in order to break the entry up a little further.]