Les Influencers
François Granger, who blogs in both French and English described Les Influencers to me as a blog where publishers can copy and paste ads they choose. Reporting is transparent and the ads are presented as though they are recommended by influencers.
One of the closest implementations of Publisher Driven Advertising (PDA)/Sell-Side Advertising where Sellers Become Seekers to date. Love ads that need transitive clearing and Cost Per Influence (CPI). Wonder who influenced these influencers... But let me leave you with my one criteria for judging an advertising model: does it create incentives for quality creative work?
UPDATE: See comment, François, Jarvis
UPDATE: See comment, François, Jarvis
Hi Ross,
We couldn't meet at les Blogs Paris. So many people to see and talk to :-)
As the mind behind The Influencers, I can tell that we are seeing two interesting things :
1/ It's a long tail application, since many new ads appear, from people that want to recommand good and creative products. Most successful ads -at this time- are sustainable developpement initiatives, which tells a lot about the psychology of some influencers.
2/ The success so far come from the lack of any money-driven transactions. This is just the usual way of the physical world. You don't give advices for money, it's just free. Because you are advisor, your own judgment is at stake, so it's better to post really good ads on your blog.
3/ We are beginning to couple that with another service, called "Les Demandeurs", whare everyone can ask for the product of his dream, and see what other want too. That's what I called Pop'Marketing or Demand-Site Marketing. You can find it here http//demandeurs.net. It's still very experimental...
If you want more info, maybe we could skype a bit...
Posted by: Stephane Lee | April 30, 2005 at 02:51 AM
Still not feeling the CPI...
http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000463041912/
Posted by: Jason | April 30, 2005 at 07:16 PM
Google can do AdSelect.
http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/EntryViewPage.aspx?guid=655
Posted by: Don Park | May 01, 2005 at 01:13 AM
Ross,
I forgot to mention my new initiative :
http://creative-mobs.com/portal/tag/YOUR-TAG-HERE
I think the RSS is the masterpiece at the time. Should be useful.
What do you think ?
Posted by: Stephane Lee | May 02, 2005 at 06:48 AM
How would reporting on the past performances of these ad's allow publishers to gleam whether the clicks came because of great copy, other publishers ad placement/positioning expertise, the ad's relevancy to other sites it has been placed on or some combination of other factors?
I think the concept is great and that it is an evolution in advertising. But couldn't there be a way to let the target consumer dictate the ad concept and copy? I have some ideas on how this might be possible but not the tech know how to determine feasibility.
Posted by: Joe Marchese | May 02, 2005 at 11:49 AM
Joe,
At the moment, we just track from where (=which blog) the click came from.
You can see on the left sidebar :
- The most popular ads based on the number of clicks
- The most popular influencers who have the most number of clicks on their site
Advertisers here have no control on where their ads will be placed. In lots of cases, it is one of their supporters who places the ad in the system (sometimes even creating the ad for them !).
So, it's not advertising at all, in the usual way. It's ads poping up from supporters that want to spread the word about a good product or service. Think "Spread Firefox" or "Gmail invites" rather than BlogAds or AdSense.
Posted by: Stephane Lee | May 03, 2005 at 05:37 AM