advertising | Media Culpa

RSS advertising back from state of hibernation

Some good news for bloggers that have few visitors but many subscribers. RSS advertising is showing signs of slowly becoming a source of revenue. Gawker Media says it grew its revenue from RSS-driven traffic by 300 percent in Q1 2008. And RSS use is apparently growing worldwide. According to a global (29 countries) social media survey from Universal McCann in March, 34 percent said they had “ever” subscribed to an RSS feed, which is up from just 15 percent the previous year.

In the article on ClickZ, it was interesting to see how different RSS adoption is in different countries. Top users (had ever subscribed to an RSS feed) are blog readers in Russia (57 percent adoption), Brazil (55 percent) and China (54 percent), while Hungary is in the bottom among the surveyed countries with just 15 percent. [Via Uppkopplat]

Also, FeedBurner will start to include Adsense ads in RSS feeds starting next week. Bloggers already in their advertising programme will see a combination of the previously offered premium ads with AdSense ads filling up the remaining space.

“Starting next week, we’ll be rolling out AdSense for feeds to a small group of publishers, in anticipation of a full launch to all FeedBurner and AdSense publishers “coming soon”. If you start seeing “Ads by Google” on an ad in a feed somewhere, that’d be us.”

[Via Text 100]

Tags: rss, adsense, advertising, reklam, rss, adsense. Ping.

H&M ad takes over fashion blog

H&M; today launched what might be the first takeover ad on a Swedish blog. The content on the popular fasion blog by Kenza Zouiten is surrounded by H&M; bikini ads. The arrangement has been managed through the blog ad network Tailsweep (disclosure: this blog also uses Tailsweep). The campaign contains more sites but Tailsweep is not willing to disclose any details at this stage.

Update: The claim by Dagens Media that this is the first HPTO (Home Page Take Over) on a Swedish blog is not correct. Roland Karlsson at Blogg Esse informs Media Culpa that both Lindex and Nivea have done so earlier this year on Engla’s Showroom.

Tags: advertising, modeblogg, mode, reklam, kenza. Ping.

Twitter could be testing ads in streams

TechCrunch writes that Twitter is testing advertising in the Twitter streams. Ads were spotted in some feeds during some service difficulties but they are not visible at the moment which could mean that they are in a testing phase.

In a poll on the TechCrunch site, a little less than half of the users don’t want ads while the rest is split about even between “yes to ads” and “I would pay for ad-free version”.

Tags: twitter, advertising, reklam, twitter. Ping.

Aftonbladet uses Tailsweep for blog advertising

Anton, Beta Alfa and Gnu & Tapir write that it seems like Aftonbladet has started using Tailsweep, the advertising network that runs on a number of Swedish blogs, including this one. The assumption was based on a banner that was up for a short while on artist Magnus Uggla’s blog on Aftonbladet.se. And if we look at Tailsweep’s site we can confirm that this is the case. There are at least three blogs in the sports category, including Robert Laul, and six political blogs, including Helle Klein and Lotta Gröning.

Tags: advertising, blog ads, tailsweep, aftonbladet, reklam. Ping.

Ingredients for effective online advertising

Dynamic Logic have identified what the most effective online branding campaigns of 2006 have in common:

– Keep it visually simple. Stick to little text and beautiful product shots.
– Put the brand front and center.
– Align online and offline campaigns. What’s happening in other media can reinforce the online message and vice versa.
– Incorporate video and rich media.
– Add interactivity.

Sleep with the best in Scandinavia

Several bloggers, including me, have reacted to sexist ads from Radisson SAS hotels. The ads had slogans like “It’s easy to sleep with the best in Scandinavia” and “Can you say no?”, accompanied by photos of a seductive woman on a bed. Now ERK, the ethical board against sexually discriminative advertising, has brought its verdict that these ads are discriminative and insulting to women in general, and therefore breaking the ICC rules for advertising.

“Den aktuella kampanjen objektifierar enligt rådet kvinnor genom att den koppling som finns mellan bilden av en kvinna eller en man och rubriken. Anspelningen på prostituerade är enligt rådet klar och annonserna ger vid en hastig blick bilden av att det är kvinnan som betraktaren skall eller kan sova med. Härigenom förmedlar annonserna ett budskap som är kränkande och därmed diskriminerande för både män och kvinnor i allmänhet. Annonserna strider därför mot ICC:s grundregler för reklam.”

In its statement the board says that the ads allude to prostitutes. The ad in question can be seen here.

Via Martin Jönsson and Bisonblog.