The Next Web

Technorati acquires a place to show ads, called BlogCritics

Written on August 26, 2008 – 5:41 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

It hasn’t appeared on the Technorati blog yet, but Michael Arrington broke the news: Technorati has acquired BlogCritics, a 6-year old blog network that draws around 1 million unique monthly visitors who watch 3 to 4 million pages.

In June, Technorati launched a blog advertising network called Technorati Media. CEO Richard Jalichandra wrote in the announcing blog post that “over the next several months, we’ll be adding blogs from the mid and long tail within those verticals.” Seems like he did just now, only in a slightly less orthodox way.

Where one would expect Technorati to focus on some sort of affiliate program, it just buys a network which gives them enough space and pageviews to place ads on. According to Crunchbase, BlogCritics has published 73,000 articles from 2,300 authors. Exactly, those bloggers are from the mid and long tail.

Jalichandra told Arrington that they will probably acquire more content sites soon. Well, truth be told, it’s a efficient way of building a solid blog ads network, that’s for sure. Although it does bring up an interesting question, is Technorati is a search company, or a media company? When choosing for the latter, who will guarantee me that Technorati search results aren’t biased?

I hope you like that post!

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!

advertising, advertising network, BlogCritics, Michael Arrington, Richard Jalichandra, search, technorati, Technorati Media

2 Comments »

Living on Twitter? Here’s a way to make money off it!

Written on August 22, 2008 – 12:26 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

Twitterholics and Twiddicts beware: there’s a new ad network in town, and it’s aiming for you!

Steve Rubel just penned a piece on Adjix, a new URL shortening service slash advertising network that turns your shortened links into ad-supported destinations. The service is currently in beta - we wouldn’t have it any other way - and is limited to the United Stated for the time being.

The company behind it, SMS Pal, also put out an open API to play with.

Here’s how it works:

People who shorten links, called linkers, can earn money when using Adjix. Adjix places an ad at the top of each page, when a link is shortened, without altering the orginal content. Advertisers can launch online ad campaigns on Adjix and be up and running in minutes.

For example, the following link was shortened using Adjix. Note the Adjix ads streaming into the top of page: http://adjix.com/2z

Hold your horses, it won’t make you wealthy:

Linkers earn $0.10/1000 unique link views (10 cents CPM per unique link impressions) and $0.20 for each valid, unique, click-through. In other words, Linkers receive $0.0001/link impression and $0.20/ad click-through. Advertisers can place ads for $0.35 per 1000 ad impressions (35 cents CPM for ad impressions) and $0.75 per valid click-through.

Think of it this way: is TinyURL or bit.ly paying you anything while you’re out there spoiling all your followers with cool links?

(By the way, here’s me on Twitter. I promise not to make me money of your back when you click on stuff I share.)

Adjix, advertising network, bitly, SMS Pal, twitter, URL shortening

6 Comments »