Federated Media have teamed up with Univeral Pictures to provide a new site built around movies and twitter. CinemaTweets, sponsored by Funny People and Universal Studios, taps in to what is hot and now in the world of movies. Be in-the-know about the latest releases, and chime in using Twitter. Let everyone know what you are watching!
The site itself is very simple, it shows a column down the left hand side which are tweets from your favourite funny people on the internet, and the column in the middle shows tweets from any users who has hashed #cinematweets. Everyone at the moment is tweeting about their favourite funny movie.
This is another great marketing service from Federated Media. Federated Media say they are a conversational advertising network, and in this case it seems as though they had an advertising campaign that needed traction, so in order to gain traction they built a new site which is supposed to build a community around the site pushing a specific movie. Great idea as long as the community actually find and uses the site and gets involved.
I have been reading Gigaom a lot lately, which is one of the worlds best technology news companies. Gigaom announced back in November that they will be leaving Federated Media for advertising revenues and move over to IDG. Since this time I have noticed a few key changes at Gigaom and was wondering if the site was being affected by the lack of quality advertising on the part of IDG?
Below is a screenshot of the Gigaom site as seem by a UK ip address.
As you can see from the screenshot Gigaom has been showing a huge amount of advertising from Chitika. These ads seem to just make Gigaom look a lot cheaper and more amateurish. Do you think the look of these ads has been affecting visitors to Gigaom?
I think it must have some affect. I have noticed these ads and from being on Gigaom several times in the last few days they have no put me off from visiting the site and actually just reading the full RSS feed instead.
In 2007 we saw a lot of ad network purchases by the big boys. Google snapped up Double-Click, and Yahoo, AOL and WPP also purchased. This leads me to finding out what ad networks we might see emerge in 2008. The list below is some of the advertising networks i expect to see more and more of in 2008, either in the form of financing or acquisition.
The Ad Network List
Federated Media – Federate Media is a unique take on an advertising network. Most of the larger ad networks simply try to sell advertising based on shear numbers and not really taking into account the individual voice of the authors or even how much the brand of the site is worth. Focusing on brands and authors individual voices, are the areas in which Federated Media are focused. This doesnt make the site or blogger change in anyway and leverages on that to bring in higher revenues for advertising space.
Ad Toll – AdToll is the advertising network that is so simple to use and integrate with your site. AdToll is a trustworthy service that allows web site owners to generate revenue through advertising. AdToll is the link between Publishers who want to sell ads on their web sites and Advertisers who want to buy ads. The service also shows all stats from your site and even possible click thru rates for each type of banner and positioning of the banner. If you are a small publisher then AdToll has to be high on your list for ad networks.
Aductions – Aductions is the transperant ad network. I tend to call it an ad network, but it is more a marketplace, connecting advertisers with publishers. Aductions has so many options for your site as a publisher, you can select the size of the advertising you are going to sell and also if your going to sell advertising on CPM or CPC base. This platform is highly customisable on both sides of the coin (be it advertiser or publisher). This site is growing at a rapid pace so make sure you head over there early and get on the bandwagon.
Ad Roll – Ad Roll is the collective advertising network that focuses on getting publishers in the same niches to join forces and sell advertising across a group of sites instead of just one. This is a great idea as the basic principle of bargaining power comes into fruition. If your a small to medium publisher you must join this network, because it will allow you to make maximum revenues for your traffic.
BlogAds – BlogAds is a similar service to Federated Media but with a bit of a twist. BlogAds does what the name says, only provides advertising solutions to weblogs. Currently it is hard to get into their network, because the only way in is to get referred by a current publisher in the network and even then they are focus on certain niches and have certain limitations. However, this being said, this ad network is very personalised with some great blogs on their books and if you did join im sure they will maximise your revenues to its utmost extent.
Pheedo – Pheedo is the RSS advertising network of the group and it is growing steady in a market that is underutilised. Pheedo provides a simple solution for selling advertising in your RSS feeds. I have found this type of advertising totally underutilised and im sure Pheedo will always be leading the push in this market. Advertising in RSS feeds is not going to make you rich, mainly because it is hard to quantify the views and click thru thus top level advertisers arent willing to invest too much money.
Disclosures: AdToll and Aductions are currently advertisers on Crenk. I am also a consultant for Aductions.
Federated Media, a popular but sometimes controversial ad network for blogs, has raised another $4.5 million in funding, according to PE Hub’s read of the company’s recent regulatory filing.
Returning backers include New Enterprise Associates and Omidyar Network, according to the filing; FM has raised nearly $3 million to date, PE Hub reports.
I just hope after this new funding round they might be able to add my blog into the network. haha.
