Image Space Media Blog » in-text advertising http://blog.imagespacemedia.com Connect to the billions of images on the Internet! Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:09:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Should Publishers Charge for Their Content? http://blog.imagespacemedia.com/2009/10/22/should-publishers-charge-for-their-content/ http://blog.imagespacemedia.com/2009/10/22/should-publishers-charge-for-their-content/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:05:06 +0000 admin http://blog.imagespacemedia.com/?p=361 online advertising, games, publishers, ad revenues, monetization, contentIn a comprehensive article for Advertising Age, author and seasoned advertising veteran Judy Shapiro discusses the question of whether publishers can best monetize their site by charging for their content (the "gated" model) or by offering it for free and relying on ad revenues.

She concludes that charging for content is outdated and futile: "Most people can get most content one way or another and circumventing the gated-content model is not that hard for users. Media companies trying to figure out how to plug all the naturally leaky ways content gets out there is like trying to win at whack-a-mole. Frustratingly unsatisfying."

The following are Shapiro's suggestions for how to best monetize your blog while using the free content model:

  • Use content to attract audiences

  • Create a community to coalesce audiences
  • Leverage the power of your community to drive revenue

Follow these suggestions and (in Shapiro's words) hear your "content monetization engine roar." Read more about Shapiro's suggestions and the rest of her article here.

]]> http://blog.imagespacemedia.com/2009/10/22/should-publishers-charge-for-their-content/feed/ 0 Blurring the Line Between Advertising and Editorial http://blog.imagespacemedia.com/2009/09/11/in-text-advertising/ http://blog.imagespacemedia.com/2009/09/11/in-text-advertising/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:30:45 +0000 Kerrie http://blog.picadmedia.com/?p=152 In-Text Advertising, journalism, publishers, Vibrant Media, KonteraRecently, 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?

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