A new kind of advertising

September 25, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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Gabe Rivera has created a new kind of advertising for TechMeme, which he explains here and here.

Simply put: He takes feeds of the latest posts from sponsors’ blogs and puts that in an ad box on Techmeme. That’s their ad. It’s brilliantly simple: dynamic advertising controlled by the advertisers, who will make their ads — their content — relevant to the readers who see their feeds on Techmeme.

I talked with Gabe about this at a conference months ago; he has put a lot of careful thought into the idea. I like it. It’s relevant; it’s human and not automated; it’s appropriate to the form. And it pays. Gabe is charging $4,500, $3,500, and $3,000 respectively for the three month-long spots (I’ll save you the cipherin’… that’s $132,000 per year). For the advertiser, that works out to a $5-8 CPM, which is good. I’m not sure there’s much difference in the first versus third position. And I think there is an opportunity to put more advertisers in the box (cookie me and show me different advertisers’ blog posts on different visits). But I think this works and I’ll be eager to hear the sponsors’ experience.

I’d love to have a such a unit here.