Sometime Samizdatista and now Texan, Alice Bachini, has some thoughts on advertising on blogs.
I do not want big advertising on my blog, the front of my house, tattooed on my forehead, or anywhere about my territory, and I do cringe at the sight of otherwise nice-looking people and things decorated with ugly great banners selling big blue things that disturb the visual peace. And more importantly, if someone being given secret or otherwise free gifts by the coca-cola company offers me a drink, I may not fully trust their recommendation.
This does not mean I want to change any laws or tell other people what to do. It just means you know what my opinion happens to be on this, and also where it hails from.
If I want to advertise something I will do it anyway for free because that is what blogs are for: the spreading of recommended ideas, thoughts, pictures, experiences and other human beings as revealed in other blogs.
I will have to leap into the defense of advertisers here, on openness grounds. I think that if there’s a big flashy banner involved on someone’s blog, you can be sure that money traded hands. And like Dr. Johnson, I have faith in the innocence of those who are out to make money.
Mind you, I think you have to be a fairly large blog to make advertising worth your while. I had ‘google ad-sense’ on my old sport blog, and that did not make any money for me even though I was getting 400 or so readers a day. Not a lot, but it is no easy task to start a blog from scratch and get 400 readers a day.
But I will agree with Alice Bachini that the aesthetics are just awful on many blogs. Those huge ‘pajamas media™’ ads one sees around the place look dreadful. It is not for the likes of a humble mortal such as I to guess at the complex and elevated deliberations of the mighty. However, if the Editorial Pantheon ever do decide to go down the advertising road, I do hope they will not disfigure the stylish nature of this page in the process.
I agree, this is a damn stylish blog. I’m hoping we get some more idiotic racists dribbling in comments soon – it’s an excuse to use that sexy lightning strike .gif again…
More?
I wonder if the prevalance of advertising on websites isn’t reflective of some market failure on the net. It would ideally be possible for the producer of a site to charge some very small amount for each access to that site. In this way, the site’s maintenance and development would be funded according to its popularity. In effect advertising is doing this by proxy. Still, a direct payment would be more efficient and some consumers would probably choose to pay rather than view the advertising.
I’m sure I heard such ideas discussed when the net was first coming into widespread use but I haven’t heard of any real system to organise such tiny payments and the idea seems to have faded away. The resources of the internet are already great but I can’t help thinking that such a system of payments would encourage the production of even more and better sites.
Simon, micro-payments was an idea which seemed great at the time but in truth did not work for many reasons, none of which are a ‘market failure’.
Maintaining sites has gotten cheaper and cheaper in both real and nominal terms as not only have hosting/bandwidth costs fallen steadily, blog and lightwieght CMS software has gotten easier to use, thereby disintermediating professional webmasters and reducing the time (and therefore cost) needed to manage a site.
As a result charging-per-view for most sites just ain’t worth the effort or the considerable increase in technical difficulty and complexity such a system requires.
Samizdata.net does not advertise not because we have any ideological objection to it (I will not be adding any ‘ad-free blog’ buttons) but because firstly I share Scott’s aesthetic dislike of most adverts and secondly, we get enough donations via the sidebar begging bowl to more or less cover the costs associated with this site (and on the occasion I find we are in the black, I spend the surplus on a blogger bash, which seems both equitable and fun).
For a while we were sponsored by an off-shore on-line casino(Link), but to be honest I let that happen more because I just loved the fact they were based in a roll-your-own micro-nation. That ran its course and whilst I would not preclude the possibility of running adverts in the future, I certainly have no plans to do so or any real inclination in that direction.
Just because I am an ardent supporter of laissez-faire capitalism that does not mean everything I do has to be about making money.
How effective is advertising? In any context.
Leave aside how it may pay for sites like these.
The MSM runs on advertising not point of sale price.You couldn’t operate a Times or a Guardian for the money that comes in via newsagents etc.
So I repeat. How effective is advertising?
When was the last time(only time ever?) that you bought a product that was advertised on the TV that you didn’t know about already through other areas of the media or had recommended to you by friends?
I just bought an Ipod recently. The reason I bought it was because a friend who already had one sat me down and walked me through it. I’d seen a million ads for them before and ignored them. Personal recommendation and experience are what counts with me, and I think a lot of you out there.
If someone wants to give you advertising money well, I’d say grab it with both hands. For in the words of our Lord “they know not what they do”
Believe me they dont. I used to work, briefly in advertising and marketing and still have nightmares over Bill Hick’s skit telling me to “Just kill Yourself” if you’d ever been involved with the trade in any way shape or form.
If you can afford esthetics, then by all means….
But Remember the BBC avoid these nasty smells by sending round the police to make you pay for their service, whether you use it or not.
I run ads simply because if I ran a for-pay site, I’d have about a dozen readers.
Right now, ads are an excellent market-driven device: as your traffic (and costs) go up, so your site becomes more of an attractive proposition for advertisers, and your ad revenue increases.
I think Alice might feel differently if her (very worthy) blog were to suddenly get 25,000 discrete visits per day, and her blogging costs rose at similar velocity to $400 a month (or more).
RAB,
If someone wants to give you advertising money well, I’d say grab it with both hands. For in the words of our Lord “they know not what they do”
True, but advertising is sometimes necessary, however unpredictable its cost effectiveness.
Ok, In what way is it necessary?
My victorian grandfather, you know back when we were the most prosperous Nation on earth,
firmly believed that if you had to advertise , you had a crap product. Word of mouth would make or break it .
Advertising is a thing in itself. It doesn’t have a clue whether it works or not, it’s glad that all the suckers who give it the cash (including Political parties) think it does.
Remember the Leonard Rossiter & Joan Collins ads back in the 70/80s? Hilarious wern’t they? They won Oscar type awards from the Advertising industry. Ah but does anyone remember what they were for?
Apparently not even then. The sales of Cinzano went DOWN.
I agree with Perry that being a capitalist doesn’t mean everything you do has to be about money. Ads tend to be ugly and impersonal. Even with Kim-sized hits, I would still prefer to use the available space to advertise things closer to home and/or heart if possible, whether they pay or not.
By the way Kim, I just found your new blog this morning by complete coincidence- glad you are back, and I will be linking you soon, so expect an extra two or three hits sometime over the weekend…
Advertising encourages people to buy things when they see it – known in psychology as the mere exposure effect, that people think more positively about things that they have already been introduced to/been around etc. So, when you need batteries and there are several brands available to you, even if that one is priced a bit higher, you’ll choose it because you feel more comfortable with it. Also advertising can really shape public perception of not just a product but an entire company. So it really is more a more complex thing than just: advertise for a product, sell more of them.
Anyway, I do agree that many advertising campaigns are just a colossal waste of cash. See Cheesecake Factory’s enormous success with a grand total of $0 to advertising and marketing. Worse still, the success of advertising is very difficult to measure.
In any case, I hope Samizdata always stays true to its great layout.
I, on the other hand, do have ideological opposition to advertising and spend a large chunk of my professional life telling the world about it. 🙂
My favourite quote is:
Adriana, If you are that anti advertising you really should look up the Bill Hicks routine, which knocks your favorite quote into a cocked hat.
Learn it by heart and you will demolish any opponent for ever after.
Worthy of a fresh topic…?
EU considers taxing emails and SMSs
I have no problem with advertising. Free stuff. Cheap stuff. The Olympics. Bathroom breaks. Cultural icons, like Santa Claus (compliments of a Coca Cola ad). And if you hate it, at least you can make fun of it. Or turn it off, or turn your head, or change the channel (or the website). Click, click.