Six Apart, provider of blogging software and hosting services, will work with online
ad network Kanoodle to let bloggers add sponsored links to their content, the companies
said on Tuesday.
New York City-based Kanoodle serves cost-per-click ads into search results and content
pages, using three targeting methods: keywords, context and behavior. Beginning late this
year or early next year, subscribers to Six Apart’s hosted TypePad blogging service can
opt to include advertising with their content.
The Kanoodle offering will make
it dirt simple, said Andrew Anker, executive vice president of Six Apart. “This announcement
is about making it easy. [Kanoodle will provide] a one-click ‘I want ads’ sort of thing.”
The goal, Anker said, is to help TypePad bloggers make money. “It’s not about us slapping
ads into their pages.”
He wouldn’t discuss whether San Mateo, Calif.-based Six Apart would
take a share of the ad revenue, saying final details of the partnership hadn’t been worked
out. The companies expect the product to be live by the first quarter of next year.
Ads included on Six Apart bloggers’ pages will use Kanoodle’s context-targeting method,
which involves bloggers selecting categories for ads via the company’s BrightAds self-service
tool for small to mid-sized publishers. Their choices are reviewed for relevance by
Kanoodle personnel.
This method ensures a good match between blog content and ads — and better results for
advertisers, said Kanoodle president Lance Podell.
“Our advertisers haven’t asked us to sell their ads demographically,” he said. “They are asking for
contextual relevance.”
Using keywords to target blog ads is problematic, Podell said, because of the often personal
and sometimes wandering nature of blog content. Keyword-triggered ads can lead to serious
mismatches, such as an ad for Microsoft’s Windows software appearing on a site devoted to
interior design.
“When you get into blog-based sites where there may be less traditional
use of content, and they don’t always stick to the subject, it’s that much trickier.”
Anker said the advantage of advertising on blogs as opposed to Web sites is that readers
tend to be extremely interested in the topic and very attached to the blogger. “You can’t
ask for a better community of users to be in front of,” he said.
Podell said the Six Apart deal provides Kanoodle advertisers with access to serious
content. “TypePad users are more likely to be serious about their content because they’re
paying for it,” he said. TypePad bloggers pay between $4.95 and $14.95 a month for the hosting
service, which includes online publishing tools.
Kanoodle has been serving ads into blog pages and RSS feeds since March 2004. On Monday,
it announced a deal with Pheedo, a Walnut Creek, Calif., provider of ad-serving technology for
blogs and feeds. The companies will offer a package consisting of ads provided by Kanoodle
along with Pheedo’s targeting, reporting and management tools.
Many bloggers already run ads in their content. In August, Google
began serving contextual ads
to users of the Blogger publishing platform, which it
acquired in February 2003.
