Weblog sales representation company Federated Media has just released a new advertising planning tool making it easy for advertisers to make an ad buy on the company’s 50 blog publishers which include Boing Boing, Digg, TechCrunch, Fark and many others. We took a test drive and found the planning tool very easy to use providing easy selection of blogs based on segmented audience profiles and demographics gleaned from readership surveys. Individual sites, groups of sites or all sites can be included in the buy, flight dates can be set and IAB standard creative units can be selected. Federated media claims its collection of blogs can deliver 70 million monthly page views.
Federated Media differs from BlogAds, another company that provides a network of weblogs on which to advertise, in that blogs are sold on a CPM basis. Ads can be run at varying impression levels over varying periods of time. In contrast, BlogAds sells its ad units for a flat fee on a per blog, per time period basis. Both models are viable. BlogAds has grown rapidly since its inception 3-4 years ago and the younger Federated Media appears to be on the right track as well.
