Mediapost updates us on the Rocketboom ad auction. I like Henry Copeland‘s quotes:
BlogAds founder Henry Copeland, whose firm bid on the ad space but dropped out when the bidding topped $12,000, said the inventory’s value might be worth as much as $50,000. “Being the first advertiser on a cult show like this, with the ads actually being produced with Amanda, assuming that is the case, is worth a lot more than $15,000,” he said, referring to Rocketboom star Amanda Congdon. “An anal-retentive media buyer will get focused on the difficulty of verifying the viewership numbers, how many of the downloads are actually watched–and miss the novelty value and cult status of the show.”
Copeland said it was not surprising that the bidding had not yet reached the higher valuations, and that the top bidders are not big-name brands. “A decision to spend takes way too long to make it through the bowels of the decision-making process,” he said. “And a lot of buyers are going to have trouble with Rocketboom having creative control over the ads.”
Baron also said that Rocketboom used eBay because conventional ad sellers moved too slowly. “We tried to go with ad sellers, but it was taking too long and our deadlines were never met,” he said. “We kept hearing that it was taking too much time for the advertisers and everyone else to understand how it could work.”
