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June 12th, 2007 by Spud Oregon
These are exciting times as the choice of available advertising programs for webmasters and bloggers is growing rapidly. It won’t be long before people are listing 10-20 of their revenue streams instead of just a handful.
I’ve been browsing the web to get some opinions on where internet advertising is going, and have randomly compiled the following seven thoughts from various sources:
1. Ad spending will move online.
The article “The Future of Web Ads Is in Britain“ from the New York Times explains how online advertising in Britain is growing at around 40% a year, and accounts for about 14% of all ad spending within the UK, more than double that in the U.S. The article goes on to say that money used in traditional advertising, such as TV commercials, is moving online. So I guess this means that there will be more advertising dollars to share!
2. Television content on the web
Bill Gates was interviewed by British newspaper, The Independent, and among his visions of the future, he implied that as more television content moves online, targeted to what the user is interested in, there will be more opportunities for online advertising. I wonder how long it will be before all YouTube videos show a commercial before the video clip? Could bloggers earn residual income from embedding videos on their sites? I see The News Room is already offering a variation on this.
3. Turn your photos into adverts
Advertising within photos is now a possibility according to Owen Thomas. He wrote about Adbrite’s new product, BritePic, which lets you put a non-intrusive ad at the top of a photo. This one has real potential. Take a look at this video to see it in action.
4. Product placement within video
The next step beyond advertising in video and images could be product placement within video, where users can click any product in a scene and view information on it. Mike Santoro of DuctTapeMarketing spoke of such program in his post “Clickable Video from VideoClix“. This would please those that hate seeing ads when they surf.
5. Social Media will build profiles for more relevant ads
“With social media and end users’ interaction it is very easy to learn about people, build profiles of people, combined with page content get better targeted ads.…with social media you are declaring this to the world, I’m putting information out there that I am happy people know about. This can be used to deliver a more relevant ad.”
Alex Blum, in discussion with Erick Schonfeld
6. Advertising and sponsorship for podcasts
RawVoice has an article on the future of podcast advertising. The general theme is that with quality broadcasts, a consistent production schedule and a strong audience, podcasts can attract advertisers and sponsors.
7. Contextual advertising with affiliate programs
I don’t know too much about this. It seems Amazon now offers a service that scans your text and replaces words with links to relevant products, and maybe eBay does, too? This is what ProBlogger Darren Rowse said about eBay’s AdContext in June 2006:
My feeling is that having more options for publishers to run ads is a good thing as each site is very different the more types of ads to experiment with the higher the chances of finding one that will suit a particular blog or site.
The purpose of this post isn’t to list all the different advertising programs, so I didn’t research this further, but it seems that there is a trend towards linking words from within blog posts to an advertiser’s site. This approach is surely going to grow in popularity because the ads get put right under the reader’s nose, rather than in a banner or sidebar.
Wrap-up: The future list of revenue streams?
- Banner ads (direct advertising)
- Affiliate ads (e.g. Amazon, eBay, AuctionAds)
- Contextual ads (e.g. Adsense)
- Text ads (e.g. Text Links Ads)
- Post level ads (text ads below blog posts)
- In-post ads (e.g. Kontera ContentLink, Amazon, eBay)
- Paid reviews (e.g. ReviewMe, PayPerPost)
- Feed advertising (e.g. Feedburner)
- Direct advertising
- Video commercials (Youtube?)
- Product placement in video (VideoClix?)
- Picture ads (AdBrite’s BritePic?)
- Podcasting sponsorship
- Donations
The money-making blog of the future could incorporate all these forms of advertising. Will yours?
Rice: 
Posted on June 12th, 2007 in Future.
Comments: 8
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Right on target, this is a great post!
By the way, what is the give rice things and getting a free backlink? do you mind if I ask what plugin do you use, and where is the backlink? Anyway, I”m really impress with all the cool plugin you are having to get more participation in your blog.
Click the big rice bowl at the top, or the link in the speech bubble that says “how to get a free backlink”.
The voting system isn’t a plugin, it’s custom coded directly into the theme.
wow! another great bright new idea!
You mean BritePic? I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before, but sometimes the best ideas are right under our noses!
I run a TV soap opera review blog and it is quite true that many who have never watched some soaps got the first summary or review from my blog first.
Many who also have watched or missed it have always come back to my blog for the “written version” which enthused them more than the “audio-visual version”.
There is truly a paradigm shift to online world from the TV world.
too many of them… where do i start?!? hehehe!
nice spud!
[…] interesting thought Okay, last week, we read about 7 thoughts on the future of web advertising by nice4rice.com, a very interesting and comprehensive post about our future income of web […]
Mr. Spud you never cease to amaze me with those brilliant reviews.