As technology matures and facilitates the cost-effective production, tracking and dissemination of online content, blogging is reaching critical mass. Marketers are beginning to take serious notice, so what lies in store for the blogosphere? By Linda Castellini.
We've talked about blogs, the workhorses of the "new Web," in these columns before. Blogs, or online Web-logs, have been touted as the future of a new Web-based communications system focusing on plain old individuals as content makers; they were considered by many to be the only credible way to talk "naturally" and "directly" to any chosen audience. The rise of social media and do it yourself (DIY) content could even challenge TV and traditional news media, argued the first and even second wave of earnest bloggers. And what did they all have that was so special, we wonder?
The answer, of course, was credibility. Real people talking without restriction to other real people would, it was naively hoped by many, lead to a massive outbreak of global straight-talking. And so the revolution continued until enough of the smart guys worked out how to make blogs make money. Inevitably, there has been much speculation about blogs challenging mainstream, one-to-many marketing and PR models but can they do this and retain the honest appeal of the original blogs?
It now seems that there are two kinds of bloggers. On one hand there are the passionate types who blog because they genuinely believe they have something to say that others may be interested in and these guys want nothing more than discussion (although increasingly they're not averse to making the odd advertising buck to cover hosting costs, for example). On the other there are entrepreneurs who are using blogs as a planned source of revenue. This latter group includes PR folks, marketers and businesspeople using blogs to push corporate or sales messages albeit tied to interesting content. Weblogs Inc, for example, is a group of sites that pays bloggers for their content and also offers marketers a paid-for channel to its blog readers. It was recently sold to AOL for a reported $25 million.
Advertisers, even those with little online experience, are discovering what consumers have known for years: at its core, the Internet is a medium "for the people." A 2005 Intelliseek study found that consumer to consumer recommendations even online consumer postings to blogs or forums carry a higher trust factor than virtually all other forms of advertising, including TV, radio and print. Blogvertising is now firmly entrenched on marketers' radar The Word of Mouth Marketing Association was created to delve into the depths of buzz, blogs and viral marketing and "reveal proven methods and best practices of getting people to say nice things about you."
To the marketers, the big interest in blogs is that bloggers, even paid ones, are influencers. At least they are in advertisers' eyes. These trend-spotters are valuable to potential advertisers as they set the trends that other consumers follow. Blogs are being used increasingly for marketing services, providing brands with a direct communications channel to their customers and prospects. Cleverly done, marketers simply set up a blog infrastructure and sit back and watch the "influencers" get to work. Many "professional" blogs don't clock up noticeable revenue figures, but they are making a difference to the bottom line of where advertising dollars are spent.
In Europe, London-Paris train operator Eurostar launched a blog site called Voice of the City to allow Parisiens to blog about their city a great way to tempt Londoners to visit Paris' hidden gems and far "cooler" than reading the latest stuffy offering from the French tourist board. In this way, blogging (along with the essential RSS newsfeeds that push the headlines around from site to desktop) are "part of the evolution of direct marketing," says Raj Samuel at marketing agency Euro RSCG 4D Digital. "For marketers, it's about thinking less in terms of channels and more in terms of opportunities and different ways to connect with consumers," he adds. Moblogging (blogging on mobile phones) looks set to follow hot on the heels of blogging in this respect. By 2007, ad spend on the Internet will account for a 4.4% share of the market, according to the latest predictions from ZenithOptimedia. Much of this will be on blog sites.
There have always been ways to make money online, many of which have been adapted to blogs. Pay-per-click gave way to pay per call (advertisers pay per call generated from a site). Click-to-call, which works in tandem with fast growing VoIP technology, works via links built into sites or blogs. As technology develops, the number of blogs mushrooms by July 2006, according to blogherald.com, there were 70 million global blogs. As critical mass is reached, even the most earnest of bloggers are realizing that there's money to be made from these seemingly innocuous posts.
Google's breakthrough AdSense kick-started the pay-per-click trend in 2002 by delivering relevant text and image ads that were precisely targeted to a site's content, however niche. AdSense enabled all popular sites and blogs to benefit from advertising revenue in a more cost-effective way than hit-and-miss banner ads had, and the vastly improved AdSense is expected to generate sales of $4 billion this year. Yet it was the next big thing, the creation of Federated Media Publishing (FMP) that changed the nature of blogvertising from relevant, ad-supported niche sites to advertising that follows the Web traffic. FMP went back to basics with its creator, John Battelle, focusing on selling targeted adverts on the most popular blog sites just as with the original traditional media model. FMP retains 40% of the revenues, so it undoubtedly exerts some pressure on the bloggers to produce content that advertisers want to support. Whether advertisers will finance blogs on a traffic-only basis, with no reference to content, remains to be seen. For now, one popular FMP site, Fark, is reportedly pulling in $600,000 to $800,000 per month in ad revenue. Battelle expects Fark to become the first blog to earn a million dollars a year in profit.
Netscape originally created RSS feeds blogging's main backbone for online news organizations. As XML capability has been programmed into RSS, the options available for the posting and distribution of blog-type information have become highly sophisticated. This versatility is leading many corporates to wonder whether they need spend so much on mainstream marketing or PR campaigns when messages can be blogged so effectively. Even corporates like Sony, Intel and Coca-Cola are now running campaigns on blogs.
Some blogs sell directly. Primal Records, a record store and label in Berkeley, California, uses its blog to tell customers about news, special offers and events. In this sense, blogs are a simple, cost-effective channel that works two ways customers can have their say via return posts. But with blog sites likes blogspot.com and blog search engines such as Technorati going strong, bloggers report themselves to be surprised at how fast blogged words travel. This is how many of our first type of blogger, the erstwhile "passionate type" with nothing to sell and only words of interest or wisdom to offer, have become embroiled in Web commerce.
But not all commercial input into blogs delivers a monthly dollar revenue. Much of the incoming money is via investment. Keeping track of what people are saying about you has become a serious business. IBM has invested large sums of money, for example, in its Public Image Monitoring Solution that monitors and analyses blogs, wikis, news feeds, consumer review sites, newsgroups and other community-generated content so that companies can keep tabs on their online image.
"Rather to my surprise," blogs Darren Rowse, "I have become a magnet for people and companies who seek positive reviews in the blogosphere, and not a week goes by without someone offering to send me something or other to check out." He goes on to justify his acceptance of an expensive chair to review (and keep), although it makes painful reading. We all know he didn't blog as a so-called influencer, but rather as media commentator making a point. Ultimately, says Rowse, it boils down to this: if companies seek visibility online, are they going to require positive reviews from bloggers, or are they truly capable of sending out a product to be honestly evaluated, simply ignored or even immediately resold online? If they can't answer that, he says, they're not ready for the blogosphere. Seems to me that this is merely the same dilemma that quality magazines have faced for years and it indicates clearly that such blogs should be placed firmly in the commercial bracket.
Social media sites are embracing all kinds of commercialization. Social site MySpace (now owned by News Corp) charges $50,000 for a commercial account. Auction giant eBay created a 75-second film clip promoting an upcoming course they're offering to the eBay seller community, then uploaded it to YouTube and mentioned it on the eBay blog to generate viewers. Nikon sent cameras to a group of photographers and asked them to post photos with camera details on social site flickr. Good marketing for Nikon; bad news for those wishing to use flickr to look at photos without being sold to, however cleverly.
It's unrealistic to expect any media with the reach and power of the blog to remain untargeted by commercial forces, especially in the media-hungry West. But with Internet usage across the Middle East growing by more than 530% per annum, according to Internet World Stats, the fastest growth rate in the world, such regions still have the option of choosing their blogscape. A report in December 2005 from Deutsche Bank stated: "In a very few exceptional cases, a blog is fully financed through advertisements.
The commercialization of blogs is regarded with criticism in the blog scene, since this undermines the credibility of the author." Blogs became popular as an alternative to commercial and sponsored sources of information, but in the months since that was written, commercialization has moved on apace. It's a little sad to think that so many "free-speechers" can be bought off so easily.
© Jordan Business 2006
