While newspapers are struggling… blogs are thriving. Well, if traffic increases and capital raisings are any indication. In particular, political blog, The Huffington Post, has seen its unique visitors increase from around 500,000 unique visitors per month in August 2007 to around 5 million in October 2008 (based on comScore figures) and has just raised $25 million in venture capital.

This third round capital injection from Oak Investment Partners brings The Huffington Post’s total amount of funding to date to $37 million. The money will be used to recruit staff (yes, there are some publishers recruiting in this environment!), and to expand The Huffington Post’s offerings into other areas like ‘business, green/clean-tech and investigative news’.

The Huffington Post may also use some of the money for acquisitions…

Source: Robin Wauters, “The Huffington Post Raises $25 Million from Oak Investment Partners”, TechCrunch, December 1, 2008

According to ad-optimizing firm, The Rubicon Project, the average amount advertisers pay publishers to display ads per 1,000 impressions (CPMs) dropped 11 percent from the second to third quarter of 2008. This is based on the experience of The Rubicon Project’s clients, consisting of 307 ad networks and 1,300 publishers.

Ad rates were down 3 percent quarter-on-quarter at social networks and 8 percent quarter-on-quarter at young adult sites. Strangely, news and reference sites actually saw a 36 percent quarter-on-quarter increase.

Meanwhile, the Rubicon Project says that venture capital investment in ad networks dropped from $800 million in the third quarter of 2007 and $400 million in the second quarter to just $241 million in Q3.

Source: Nicholas Carlson, “Ad Net Rates Dropped 11% In The Third Quarter,” Silicon Alley Insider, November 3, 2008

While publishers watch, horrified and largely powerless, as torrent sites become more and more popular, and continue to facilitate large scale copyright infringement, one author and academic, Dan Morrill, decided to conduct a little test.

Morrill offered his latest ebook, ‘Selling Books On Amazon, Tips and Secrets’ on popular BitTorrent tracker Mininova. Within the first 24 hours, Morrill’s eBook was downloaded close to 700 times.

Morrill’s conclusion? BitTorrent is a great content distribution channel!

Corvida of ReadWriteWeb believes that usage of the BitTorrent network will only increase in the next few years. Eventually, publishers will realize that it’s actually a marketing tool. Corvida observes:

“It’s undeniable that BitTorrent can prove to be an effective marketing tool for a cheap price when used correctly. Nine Inch Nails concluded the same in March of this year when they uploaded part 1 of their 4 part album Ghosts I-IV to numerous BitTorrent sites. It became the #1 most downloaded album on The Pirate Bay, which helped to increase their sales tremendously for the rest of the album.”

Hmmm… is BitTorrent a tool more Internet marketers should be using?

Source: Corvida, “University Program Director Asks Readers to Pirate His eBook”, ReadWriteWeb, October 18, 2008

Blog search engine Technorati has acquired AdEngage, a small online advertising network.

While Technorati’s own ad network (launched in June) is mainly targeted at large, high-traffic sites, the company plans to roll out a new ad network based on the AdEngage platform, which will be open to all publishers who fulfill Technorati’s quality standards.

AdEngage will continue to operate as an independent business, while the newly created Technorati Engage will be aimed at blogs and social media sites.

AdEngage, which was founded in 2004, currently delivers over 12 billion ads on over 4,000 sites each year. Writing in ReadWriteWeb, Frederic Lardinois notes that a substantial part of AdEngage’s business comes from adult sites (2,112 out of 3,577 currently active sites).

This, he says, is probably the chief reason why Technorati has decided to let AdEngage continue to operate independently for the time being.

Source: Frederic Lardinois, “Technorati Acquires AdEngage - Launches Self-Service Advertising Network”, ReadWriteWeb, October 15, 2008

Google and Yahoo are apparently negotiating with the Justice Department to remove its objections to the two companies’ controversial search advertising deal.

As originally planned, the deal would essentially see Google serve up ads for Yahoo search results. Many – from advertisers and publishers to politicians – have expressed concerns that the upshot will be less competition and higher ad prices.

The Justice Department is evidently looking at capping the volume of Google ads Yahoo could show, imposing price constraints to prevent price hikes, and other initiatives to allow a deal to go ahead that would preserve competition.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Will A Volume Cap Make The Yahoo/Google Deal Work?” TechCrunch, October 14, 2008

The deal allowing Google to run ads against Yahoo search results sure has stirred up the media industry. Now the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) - a group representing newspaper publishers across the globe - has voiced its dissent over the deal.

WAN has stated that the agreement will limit competition, increase search ad prices, and exacerbate Google’s domination over the Internet advertising industry.

Members of WAN don’t just rely on Google and Yahoo for advertising revenue (as Yahoo Publisher Network and Google AdSense partners) but also buy search ads in order to drive traffic to articles and other content. WAN believes the current level of competition between Google and Yahoo is essential for ensuring both decent advertising returns (i.e. their share of Adsense or Publisher Network revenue) as well as competitive paid search prices.

Source: Kate Kaye, “Global Newspaper Group Pans Google/Yahoo Deal”, The ClickZ Network, September 15, 2008

Adgregate Markets has released a service called ShopAds which allows companies to process secure credit card purchases within display ads.

Using the ShopAds technology, someone who views a ShopAds supported banner ad on a given publisher’s website can potentially order a product or service within that ad… without being redirected off the publisher’s website.

Like other widgets, ShopAds can be shared on social network profiles and other pages. However, what’s truly innovative is the ability for them to appear within any Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard display ad unit.

ShopAds are Flash-based and, unlike JavaScript based transactional ad units, don’t rely on a secure host site to ensure secure transactions. Rather, the secure, encrypted shopping carts inside ShopAds are portable into any HTML environment, including social network pages and blogs.

When a sale is complete, the ShopAds system confirms the transaction with a “thank you” and sends the buyer a tracking number via email. Buyers may continue shopping or return to the original widget screen, which can host large catalogs with potentially millions of products.

I think ShopAds has huge potential for advertisers/merchants and publishers/affiliates. Not to mention customers, since it overcomes the “inconvenience barrier” of having to click away from a website in order to inspect, or indeed buy, a product.

Source: Fred Aun “Allowing Web Users to Transact Through Ads”, The ClickZ Network, September 9, 2008

Buzz, Yahoo’s answer to Digg, is now open to anyone to contribute news stories. Previously, only invited publishers could contribute news to Buzz.

Like Digg, Buzz aims to rank news based on reader popularity i.e. reader “buzz”. Unlike Digg, Buzz reserves the editorial discretion to change headlines (in order to prevent or reduce gaming).

Still, if you contribute news to Digg, you might want to try Buzz as well.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Yahoo Buzz Opens Doors To Everyone”, TechCrunch, August 18, 2008, Buzz

A new benchmarking study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and consulting firm Bain & Company, indicates that publishers may be underselling their ad inventory as they increasingly rely on ad networks to sell ad impressions.

The IAB sponsored “Digital Pricing Benchmarking Study,” released yesterday, found that publishers sold 30 percent of their ad impressions via ad networks in 2007, up from just 5 percent of all ad impressions in 2006. But while ad networks may be pleased with this massive 600 percent increase in usage of their services, a “quick fix” approach by publishers to dump excess ad inventory onto ad networks may actually be hurting both groups.

Publishers typically see their ad rates cut by up to 90 percent when they sell though ad networks. But this isn’t inevitable. According to the IAB and Bain & Company, if publishers and ad networks developed better working relationships, they could together bring about higher CPMs and greater ad revenues for all.

Publishers and ad networks both achieved increased ad revenues in 2007 – an increase of 30 percent per annum for publishers and an increase of 50 percent per annum for ad networks. But with tougher economic times constraining ad budgets in 2008, such growth levels are far from guaranteed going forward. By working more closely together to manage inventory and ad sales, publishers and ad networks are better able to maintain their revenue growth momentum.

Source: Douglas Quenqua, “Study: Publishers Slashing Prices to Dump Excess Inventory”, The ClickZ Network, Aug 12, 2008