Sep/090
Did You Know?
Image Space Media works alongside other ad technologies to generate incremental revenue for your website. This means that you can implement our in-picture advertising technology in addition to other ad programs such as Google AdSense, banner advertisements, and "affiliate" programs. To learn about these ad programs and other strategies to earn money from your website, check out our Blogging for Bucks article!
Sep/090
Publisher of the Week: Your Auto Stuff
This week, the Image Space Media team would like to recognize YourAutoStuff.com as Publisher of the Week. YourAutoStuff.com is dedicated to being "your one-stop automotive resource website." The innovative site provides daily updates on the latest automotive news and has plenty of images and videos of the latest car models. YourAutoStuff.com also has a live webcam of the Nurburgring where readers can check out an impressive collection of exotic cars and test mules on the famous motorsport race track in Nürburg, Germany.
YourAutoStuff.com is truly a site that every car enthusiast should have bookmarked!
Sep/090
NYT to Conquer Twitter?
The New York Times is working on an interesting Twitter project. The newspaper is building an application that can pull relevant tweets on a specific topic to make search more efficient for Twitter users. The Moment, a popular Times fashion blog, has already been using the tool and may have over 1.2 million Twitter followers as a result.
At yesterday’s OMMA conference, the Times’ Senior VP of Digital Operations Martin Nisenholtz said that the news organization has an opportunity to take on an important intermediate role on Twitter. Nisenholtz believes that there is “a lot of power in organizing and curating this world” and believes that developing a Twitter aggregator that understands context would help foster this idea.
Nisenholtz also noted the role of social media in boosting the site traffic on NYTimes.com. Twitter adds approximately 15,000 Times followers each week and Facebook is expanding the newspaper’s demographics.
Sep/090
A Peak Inside Our Image Manager
Haven't registered with Image Space Media yet? Here's an example of what you will see in your Image Manager. Our technology allows you to turn the in-picture advertisements on images on or off and to provide relevant search keywords for each of your pictures. To get started with Image Space, CLICK HERE.
Sep/090
Connecting with Your Readers
In August, we listed some helpful online tips for small newspapers, including creating a Twitter tree of accounts, tweeting a live headline feed, posting online events, and blogging. With more and more online news publications signing up for our technology, we've decided to introduce another basic way to connect readers to your organization: user-generated blogs.
Using user-generated content can help enhance the relationship between you and your readers. Implementing social tools that your readers are already using is a great way to involve your audience and enable them to share information through photos, videos, and written posts. For example, CNN's iReport allows users to submit articles, videos, and photos that are unedited or screened before they are posted. "At CNN we live for news," states the About section on iReport. "We love talking about it. And we know that there's a whole lot more to it than what you see on TV or read on your favorite Website. So we've launched an independent world where you, the iReport.com community, tell the stories we're not used to seeing. And the most compelling, important, and urgent ones may get seen on CNN."
The best part is, user-generated photos can be added to your Image Space Media Image Manager so you'll end up with more images on your website. Not only will you build a stronger sense of community, but you could potentially increase the earnings for your site!
Sep/091
Blurring the Line Between Advertising and Editorial
Recently, many popular websites such as Fox News, Popular Mechanics, and IGN have started to use in-text advertising, a technology that turns an article’s words into mini-advertisements. When readers move their cursors over these double-underlined words, a pop-up advertisement appears and blocks some of the article’s text.
Once limited to niche websites, many mainstream news sites now use in-text advertising, blurring the line between editorial and advertising. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, journalism ethics experts believe the trend is ethically problematic and “quite corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility." A spokeswoman from Dow Jones, the organization that publishes the Wall Street Journal, stated that beyond being unethical, the ads “interrupt the reader’s experience.”
But the companies that produce these in-text ads, including Vibrant Media and Kontera, see them as “part of their continuing experimentation with different forms of online advertising.” They believe their technologies help website owners sell additional ads in a time when prime real estate on their sites is sold too quickly.
Image Space Media applauds companies like Vibrant Media and Kontera for their experimentation with online advertising technology. What do you think?
Sep/090
An Eye on Military Bloggers
Since most of our publishers are independent bloggers, we thought you would be interested to hear about New York Times writer James Dao’s recent article on the government monitoring of military blogs. According to Dao, the Department of Defense plans to announce a new policy setting restrictions on access to social networking sites from military computers, which could potentially limit soldiers’ abilities to blog. The Department cites cybersecurity as a reason for issuing this policy.
While the Army is encouraging its personnel to blog and use other sites such as Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter in an attempt to promote interaction among enlisted soldiers and other officers, the voices behind these army blogs seem to already be somewhat censored since the Army instituted a policy requiring that bloggers register with their commanding officers and submit posts to be reviewed.
To read James Dao’s full article, “Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog,” click here.