Due to their personal style and subjective tone, blog sites can easily become the favourites of local advertisers. But only if bloggers allow it.
The pioneers of blog-ads have arrived to Hungary, but local advertisers still favour magazine-type portals that attract a large number of visitors. For example, the blog version of Machomedia, a website with strong pornographic content, advertises a new Gillette razor on its banners.
“Blogs around specific subjects are the most attractive for advertisers. These are practically similar to vertical portals, furthermore, they are more valuable due to their subjectivity,” said Gergely Antal, a consultant at Carnation Rt., the company that prepared Gillette’s online ads.
Local advertisers have begun to discover the potentials of ads on blog sites, because blogs have become popular through their readers and not through the marketing of their publishers, Antal added.
Blogs can soon become the favourites of local advertisers, although currently there are very few of them that attract a stable viewership in Hungary. Blogs can also be used efficiently for Public Relations (PR). For example, commercial TV-channel tv2 uses blogs to popularise its own programmes.
“PR is much more effective on blogs than ads are,” said Ildikó Halász, a consultant at PR and communications company Weber Shandwick | GJW. Several Western-European companies have chosen blogs for internal communication, instead of establishing an expensive intranet network. “However, its disadvantage is that the management cannot control the entire flow of information,” senior consultant Boglárka Koller added.
Local bloggers would not mind ads. However, some would keep a sharp eye on putting out only those ads that suit the subject of their blog sites.
“I would definitely not allow anyone to place a big, aggressive and wriggling ad on my blog, because I would not like to force my readers to stare at stupid commercials. On the other hand, an ugly ad could ruin the look of my webpage,” local blogger Vadjutka said.
“I would not mind, but with a readership of only a few hundred, there is not much chance for that,” the owner of another blog called The revenge Of The Panther said. According to Vadjutka, blog-ads will not be successful, since blogs are part of the private life, and people are usually not keen on “selling” their privacy.
Source: HVG
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18.06.2004