Why is Darren Rowse still with b5media after all that has happened there. Darren Rowse who is also know as the Problogger co-founded b5media. I have been wondering after all the job cuts and changes over at b5media, why Darren Rowse is still with the company and is his part in the companies future.
Problogger is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is the cornerstone of b5media which is a network of over 300 blogs. Darren doesn’t see to have a huge active role within the company, but why does he sit by and watch when it is slowly going down the toilet in a tough advertising economic environment.
Darren doesn’t need to be at b5media any more, because his site is still growing and im sure he will always have his equity stake in the company, so what is his motivation?
A lot of people have been talking recently about Performancing Ads, John Chow, Problogger and Shoemoney to name a few. I totally understand the system they are trying to put in place, but is it actually going to work? For a long time people have been saying that Advertising marketplaces are the way forward, but I dont think that the type of marketplace that Performancing ads has will ever work.
Performancing ads simply will add a banner onto your site so that you can self-serve advertising, a full automated system. While at the same time they gather information about your traffic and user demographics. This is meant to automate the system so the publisher doesn’t have to worry about negotiating individual contracts or the advertiser doesn’t have to worry about having a 5 email exchange before they can purchase.
Advertisers will only purchase advertising in this way on sites that are already major players in their niches, solid brands or emerging sites. Thus, it has a very limited return for publishers. A great deal of smaller sites have joined Performancing Ads in the hope that they will sell more advertising.
Selling advertising in this method for small sites simply doesn’t work, because they don’t have the traffic or brand to actually sell. Smaller sites really need to band together in a particular niche and use the safety in numbers method, cause then they will have a much better chance of getting more top quality advertisers with their broader reach.
This method of self service is great for only a very limited few sites. Therefore, I’m sure that Performancing Ads will only be a fad and they will die off soon enough. The only way this platform can work successfully, is if they have a huge amount of publishers, then a marketplace which makes it very simple to purchase across 10 sites for example, while at the same time they increase their sales team.
Currently, Performancing Ads is a company that medium or small bloggers shouldn’t be taking seriously!
Technorati, one of the worlds largest blog search engines has spent a long time trying to find a new model for their company and today I think they have launched a great offering. Introducing Technorati Media. Technorati Media is the new blog advertising network for anyone and everyone. The advertising network will not open fully for another couple months, but you can apply now and hopefully get in early.
Technorati has been testing their ad network for a while already and seem to have found some good results. The ads will be sold by CPM method, in which allow a little more security for publishers within the network. Im always interested when new blog networks enter the market and I cant wait to see what results come from this new network. Here at Crenk we have already signed up to this service, so cant wait to report to everyone our findings.
