Role Reversal: Blogs Start Advertising

In an interesting twist today, MarketingVox [an online blog covering the advertising and media buying industry] ran an ad in the eMarketer newsletter. The interesting part of this is that MarketingVox is a blog and blogs aren't known for advertising. Everyone's talking about ways in which blogs may be able to generate revenue but nobody's talking about blogs running their own advertising campaigns.

I think its a pretty good sign blogs are maturing. Even though I think we're at least 12 months away from having a full blown industry in blogs. By that I mean an industry in which advertisers understand how to spend, where to spend and what to expect. Oh yeah, we'd need an industry watchdog as well (it sure as hell ain't gonna be me).

Update: Here are Tig's thoughts. He's the blogger at MarketingVox.

"I think you'll see more and more trade advertising done by blogs because some blogs have such well-groomed, focused audiences that they can charge higher CPMs than the traditional trade press."

"I also see blog-structured trade publications doing more and more innovative marketing arrangements with other blogs and trade publications. Perhaps it's a cultural thing. Where traditional trade pubs tend to view their competition from a distance, viewing these enemies through squinty eyes, blogs tend to view their competition as friends. MarketingVOX headlines run at the bottom of MarketingProfs' homepage with an ad placement that both companies sell jointly. This isn't the sort of thing you're going to see come out of a meeting with Crain and VNU executives."

Definitely some interesting points from Tig on a new type of advertiser / publisher relationship.