feedbuzzard

Found this today over at waxy.org

Waxy.org: Daily Log: Yahoo’s Contextual Ads in the Wild
So, I think I have a scoop. I’ve discovered that Yahoo is very quietly testing their new contextual advertising program for blogs and other small publishers, a la Google Adsense.

Ken Rudman is a product manager at Yahoo-owned Overture, and his blog features contextual Overture ads throughout. His homepage shows the vertical two-ad format, monthly archives show a three-ad horizontal format, and individual entries show another variation of the horizontal format. The ads have decent relevancy, especially considering its early state.

The Javascript that generates the ad IFrame is hosted on Overture’s server. The domain name refers to “ypn,” which might be an acronym for the ad program… Yahoo Publishing Network, maybe?

Related articles

The RSS Weblog reports:

Kanoodle Partners with Moreover; Monetizes RSS Feeds

Kanoodle, a Google-styled champion of small advertisers and syndicated advertising partners, has partnered with Moreover to distribute the feeds of Kanoodle’s BrightAds customers, according to an e-mailed press release. BrightAds is an ad syndication scheme similar to Google’s AdSense program. In this two-pronged new development, Kanoodle now delivers context-sensitive ads to RSS feeds, allowing those feeds to be monetized with little effort on the publisher’s (the blogger’s) part, and also broadens the distribution reach of its customer’s feeds by automatically packing them into the Moreover distribution network.

The march of monetization inevitably continues, to the distress of RSS purists who believe the medium should remain commercial-free. RSS is merely a publishing format, no different in principle from any other platform that distributes information content. Kanoodle’s breakthrough is in making RSS feeds as easily monetized as Web sites, which Google proved a win-win platform for ad-syndicator and ad-provider.

I will continue to resist putting advertising into my RSS feeds.

Related articles

I found this great top-ten style posting over at IdeaMarketers by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff. I’m only including the first four here to whet your appetite. You’ll have to visit their site for the Full Monty –but I highly recommend you do. I keep this one printed and on the wall.

Most of the “rules” about writing for ezines and newsletters apply to writing posts for your blog, but there are some important differences. Keep these 10 tips in mind and you’ll be publishing great blog content that attracts prospects and clients in your niche market.

1. Write with the reader in mind. Remember WIIFM? It�s marketing jargon for What’s In It For Me? That’s what you should be keeping in mind. Your reader will read your post looking for what�s in it for them.

2. Make it valuable and worthwhile. Don’t waste people’s time. If you don’t have anything to say, no problem, plenty other people do. So share their articles, do an interview, review a book.

3. Proof-read for typos and glaring grammatical errors. You wouldn’t go out of the house with dirty hair or missing a sock, so why would you publish spelling mistakes? Respect your readers by polishing up your stuff.

4. Keep it short and simple, sweetie. (KISS). Most people are scanners. You may have a lot to say and think it interesting, and it may be. But people are reading online and out of time. Get to the point quickly. Publishing short posts more frequently is a better format than publishing lengthy articles every few weeks.

5. Keep it lively, make it snappy and snazzy. Even if you aren’t a natural born writer, you can write for your blog. Just write like you’re speaking to your friend -or to yourself! Remember though, get to the point quickly. Keep in mind the journalist’s rule of 5 W’s in the first paragraph: who, what, why, when and where.

http://www.ideamarketers.com/library/article.cfm?articleid=39355

Related articles