Lenore Skenazy of FreeRangeKids, writing for Ad Age asks why it’s so hard for a blogger to find advertisers on her own.
The truth is: I have no idea how to find a sponsor and I fear that, for all their talk about social media, sponsors are not out there finding us — “us” being the blogs with a feisty, even fanatical following of 5,000-10,000 page views a day.
Danielle Wiley, senior VP-digital brands at Edelman Digital, Chicago and blogger at Foodmomiac, thinks ad networks are the answer.
Our clients are dying to connect with bloggers like Lenore, but they are limited in their opportunities to do so. To that end, the simplest solution we’ve found is to work with blogger networks such as BlogHer or Federated Media. At Edelman, we like these networks because they offer quality blogs, and they allow us to get creative with our buys.
Wiley wants a simple solution, but simple isn’t always the right answer. Federated Media might make things simple for the agency, but their stable of sites in any one channel is limited by design. Take this channel. FM told us several years ago they didn’t want to work with us because we don’t publish enough original content. So, if you’re a company that wants to reach people working in advertising, FM might be able to assist you, but AdPulp (and it’s inadequate content) won’t be part of the media buy.
If you work in the media department at Edelman, or any other shop, find a way to dig for the sources your clients need. The concept that the Web is too vast to make sense of is some weak sauce. There are plenty of people who do nothing but make sense of the Web each and every day.