Baiting Your Blog...Would You Sell Your Words for a Profit?

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Baiting Your Blog...Would You Sell Your Words for a Profit?

Would you Sell Your Words to Make a Buck? There is an interesting trend emerging in the on-line world. According to an article in the most recent issue of Business Week, entitled "Pitching Between the Lines", advertisers are exploring a new goldmine of potential targets for their ads...Web surfers and blog readers!

The focus of the article was largely about competing for a powerful new entity known as "mind share." According to Vibrant Media, a marketing company that provides a product it describes as "contextual video advertising," every word across the Internet is an opportunity to engage your customers."

Vibrant Media business is to build branding for its customers through utilizing a specialized technology which underlines relevant text twice. When the cursor clicks over the selected word (which has been chosen by the client as being relevant to their brand), the advertisement appears in a small window and can contain a link which produces a bubble, a written pitch, a voice-over or video.

According to Business Week, 3-10% of web users actually click on in-text ads. The web media advertising revenue has increased 27% to 19.6 billion over the past year while newspaper advertising has decreased 1.7% to 46.6. billion. With this kind of money in the pot, it is understandable that the players are influential and the stakes are high.

This does raise some interesting issues however regarding the implications of words and how they are used or misused. It was pointed out in the Business Week article that some journalist think that "selling words" in a story may further blur the line between editorial and ad content. Apparently, in 2004 Forbes magazine on-line had a lot of negative backlash from the practise. But today many other companies are utilizing this technology. In fact the number of newspapers using the format offered through Vibrant Media has doubled this past year and now includes over 3,000 sites.

As Activerain network pursues syndication for blogging content, and the impact of blogging continues to grow, this will eventually impact the real estate industry. Real estate is the portal which opens up the door to an exponential amount of business. Think about the things that transpire when people move. Banks open new accounts, grocery stores and retail outlets get new customers, schools enroll new pupils...etc, etc. Billions of dollars move around each year because of the movement fostered by the efforts of the real estate community.

So, with that in mind...Would you Sell Your Words as Advertizing Bait for a Profit? Would it change What & How You Wrote? Just curious...

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Lola Audu, CRS, GRI e-Pro ~ Audu Real Estate

Lola Audu, is the Designated Broker & Owner of Audu Real Estate. Our company specializes in helping people buy and sell homes in the greater Grand Rapids, West Michigan area. We've had the privilege of helping hundreds of clients succeed in their goals of purchasing and selling property including demonstrated success in the negotiation of Short Sale Transactions. You can contact us via e-mail @ info@auduhomes.com or by phone at 616-791-0511.

Posted by Lola Audu~Real Estate Broker/Owner Grand Rapids, Michigan Real Estate on 11/28/2007 06:51 PM

Comments (36)

blogging audience, real estate blogs, real estate

Originally posted at: Inspired Real Estate For Today: Baiting Your Blog...Would You Sell Your Words for a Profit?

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36 Comments on Baiting Your Blog...Would You Sell Your Words for a Profit?

NOV

2007

We are selling ur words here, we just don't get paid for it.. only in our increase of google juice and possibly refferrals/....Mike

Hmm...interesting perspective Mike. In a sense, you're absolutely right. However, I think the difference here is using words to create targeted advertisement. The reader comes to our blogs to get some kind of information. They are not usually targeted for advertising just because of the simple act of reading...at least not yet.

I agree with Mike, it's just a different type of advertising, marketing ourselves. Would I sell in-text blog ads for extra money? I might, if I truly believed the product or service would be something that could help my clients or readers, and if I believed in the product. Pepsi? no. Mason Mortgage? yes. McDonald's? no. Local mom and Pop restaurant? maybe....

Hi Marlene, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I find your comment regarding the intention of the advertising to be helpful. Had not thought about that angle yet.

Most interesting post - real food for thought!

I've seen this. However, it requires a pop-up and if there is one thing more annoying than a pop-up on a web page, it hasn't yet been invented.

I believe that the consumer is as disgusted by the constant marketing of everything all the time as am I.

It may also require a java app. That could make it difficult for Google to handle.

We'll see.

Thanks for stopping by to read and comment Bill & Barbara Jo...the article made me think too.

Hi Lenn, I haven't run across it I don't think. But I know that some blogs which utilize pop ups for links create some issues with my brower. I was struck by the fact that the simple act of reading an article is now a marketing target...will it be books next?

NOV

2007

Lola,

Interesting and thought provoking topic. Will everything I read now be one giant advertisement? I hope not. When I write my blog posts, I want to get higher search engine rankings but not at the expense of my reading audience. I don't want every other sentence of my posts to be a keyword search term. The world of information keeps changing.

That was indeed an interesting article. Lola, there is so much that is changing and being added to the marketing of real estate and websites & blogs that I am interested as heck to see what the next year is going to bring.

Would I do it? Right now, no. Somehow it would feel depersonalized.

Lola, it is interesting that you write about this last night. I received an email in relation to something like this, except from one of the companys that sales the internet verbage trying to lock me in for $2000 for a year for 3 phrases that would bring people to my webpage.

Hi Lola, I for one am already overwhelmed by the amount of advertising I am hit with on a daily basis. I have seen the little pop ups Lenn talks about, and they don't seem affected by a pop up blocker either.

Sure is some interesting food for thought. I really don't know what I'd do but like Lenn...I hate pop-ups....

Harold, it's a very interesting concept. From a journalistic standpoint, it's a little disturbing to think that a news article could potentially be slanted to promote a product vs. to tell an accurate story. But, I can also appreciate Marlene's comment about the fact that this could serve as a resource which was helpful too. In a way Mike's comment is especially relevant if you think about what the links on a blog post do.

Hi Kris, Appreciate your thoughts. I think what would "depersonalize" blog writing for me would be the thought of choosing words to satisfy an advertising program. This is not necessarily what is happening right now...however, the temptation would be greater if my words were tied to the dollar in such a direct fashion. JMHO.

Interesting Danny. It sounds like they were trying to get you to purchase a Search Engine Optimization Package. Now, here's the question. If you were being Paid to use the same keywords so they could be linked to a product commercial...would you? :)

Allison... The fact that they don't seem to be affected by a popup blocker is annoying. That would be one suggestion that the Antivirus software people could work on for the next release. :)

Monika, Thanks for stopping by to read and comment. It will be interesting to observe how this develops online.

Lola,

Sounds like the bubbles they had on MTV videos years ago that gave you facts about the bands while the video was playing. Now, it's coming to our blogs. Personally, I don't care for all the advertising these days and I'm sure it'd require some sort of pop-up. I'll have to be sure I have a really good filter in place.

As usual, a great thought provoking post, Lola. Thanks

Very intersting post Lola and a great read for sure. Makes you think about the things you write and post everywhere. Enjoyed reading it and thanks for sharing.

Lola, The internet is just about everything else in life. If you give an inch they will take a mile. We must certainly begin to sift through the debris to find the pearls. Thinking is great. Thanks for the help. Deb

Andrew, Thanks for your comment. I don't recall if those "bubbles" on MTV were selling the band's products. Were they more informational? I think this is different in the sense that it is a very well executed "pay per click" program which utilizes the audience that reads a particular article as a target base for the advertisement.

Something to thing about. But having to hear a voice or pop-up video if I clicked the underlined word would really annoy me. Peaceful, quiet blogging is what makes it enjoyable for me.

Hi Marey, Thanks for stopping by to read and comment on my post.

Appreciate your comment Debra! Advertizers are looking for new ways to reach an audience just about as earnestly as many of us are trying to avoid being the target. :)

Lisa, Can you imagine reading an article in an office and you click on double underlined word to open up a complete video with audio...could be a little disconcerting, I agree. Particularly because the first association would, for most people, be thinking they were opening up a regular link.

Oh my....I really find this disturbing! Depending on the type of article I was reading it would be really annoying to have a pop up interrupt my train of thought. Or....If I wrote something and, for example, used the word squeeze...is the Charmin guy going to pop up....yup disturbing!!

LOL Joan about the Charmin guy! First of all, I think that the choice would be entirely yours to participate or not and my understanding is that the reader would have to click the link to get the ad. Sounds like this is something you wouldn't consider. Just trying to get a read on people's thoughts. Thanks for contributing to the discussion.

NOV

2007

Lola- Good read on what companies are thinking as the next wave in advertising. I think that we should all be free to sell what we want to on our blogs and sites and let the consumer decide for themselves whether they want to click or not. Katerina

Katerina, Thanks for sharing your opinion. That's what this forum is all about. If this service provides Value, it can be a winner, otherwise consumers will be turned off and move to other means of getting information which are not perceived to be intrusive.

I agree with Lenn - if anything, pop-ups would make me less likely to buy a product.

Holy yellow shirt Lola! Your new photo looks great.

I think that there is line of spam and not spam. If this trend is to increase, I think consumers will look for other websites and blogs with better content and less commercials. In my opinion, this is really building off of marketing such as Google Adsense. Incorporating advertising into the text is taking it up a notch.

This is an interesting post Lola. I flagged it. (apparently that is a good thing on ActiveRain.)

Brian, Thanks for sharing your opinion. I don't know if it would necessarily have that effect with me...but just thinking about the idea tends to give me an inclination of annoyance...I guess it might depend on the product and how it was tied to the text.

Ryan, Thanks on both counts....the picture and the flagging. I think your perspective on Google Adsense is interesting. Perhaps, that is just the beginning. As we get more used to and accepting of dealing with the hassle of trying to get information while being Sold To", perhaps, there may or may not be enormous objection to dealing with making it more aggressively a part of the message/text. Hadn't thought about that perspective. Hm...

Lola,

We really should draw a line somewhere between content and advertising. If ads will appear from article words, it just blurs the article's message and confuses the reader. If this trend continues, soon we won't know fact from fiction. Good concept to bring up for discussion.

DEC

2007

Esko...that's exactly the problem. The implications for all professions could be enormous. Thanks for adding your insights to this discussion.

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Lola Audu~Real Estate Broker/Owner Grand Rapids, Michigan Real Estate

Grand Rapids, MI

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