The going is good for ad network Federated Media. With a 40% share of all ad sales, doing $10m over 90 or so sites is a pretty decent cash flow. Sure, it’s next to nothing compared to the big monster ad networks, but Federated Media is the choice for most up and coming blogs that have reached the point where Adsense just don’t cut it.
There have been some grumbling over those 40% however. In a recent article in BusinessWeek, Jason Calacanis says:
“The second you build your client’s business past $500,000 a year, they hire their own sales force.”
Actually, I think he said it before, but still, 40% is a pretty big piece of the cake. That doesn’t stop Federated Media from having major online players such as Gawker and GigaOm under their banner, so it would seem that they are doing. Founder John Battelle does indeed see it from another perspective than Calacanis:
Battelle believes the relationships he is building with advertisers will help it clear that hurdle. “Boing Boing is never going to get into the offices of General Motors (GM ),” he says. “But Federated Media does all the time.”
Indeed, that is the strength of an ad network. Sales people for niche sites might have problems with this, but then again they might not.
Credibility is another strength of ad networks. Having statistics and the general ad functionality delivered by a company not owned by the publisher somewhat secures the advertiser that everything is working as it should. However, statistics are still a tough nut since there are so many ways to measure them, not to mention the new ajaxy way of today’s Web 2.0 websites where pageviews as a business model is just plain stupid.
To get to the bottom of the statistics mess, Federated Media and ComScore have announced a partnership to further investigate today’s “conversational websitesâ€. Or, from the press release:
[…] announced a research and development initiative designed to provide comprehensive measurement of conversational media such as blogs and community-driven sites.
Any clarity that would give us, and any new ad models tailored for blogs and Web 2.0 it might lead to are greatly appreciated I’m sure.
Originally posted on February 5, 2007 @ 1:39 am