Monday, February 12, 2007

What's a Wiki Worth?

Publishers looking to increase traffic through user-generated content are turning to wikis. The hard sell will be convincing advertisers that these sites are as worthy as professionally-authored pages.

For example, Meredith, which publishes Better Homes and Gardens and a few dozen other magazines, just launched a scrapbooking wiki. Since the site just launched, Meredith is displaying AdWords ads, which is the lowest hanging fruit available for publishers to monetize content.

But shouldn't advertisers be willing to pay higher CPMs for a focused audience where people are willing to donate their time to create a wiki? I mean, if you want people who are passionate about a subject (even scrapbooking), aren't these the experts that are your target audience? Vertical advertising is the future, and wikis are in the center of the action.

It will take some third-party auditors or adventurous advertisers to prove that wikis are worthwhile places for ads, but I'm guessing that people who take the plunge early are getting a bargain.

By John Gartner at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

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