Audio Ads And Earning Money At Readers’ Expense

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Intent on turning their blogs into money-making endeavors, many bloggers are now turning to audio and video ads as a way to generate income. Recently, I’ve seen several reviews praising this form of advertising, including a plug in today’s Wall Street Journal.

The principle is simple: advertisers bid how much they want to pay to run an ad on your website. If you accept the bid, you agree to insert code that will automatically run an audio or video ad for every visitor to your blog. On the average, according to the WSJ you’ll earn about $14 for every 1,000 visitors.

Oh, sure, it sounds great up front but think about what you’re getting in return for essentially forcing your readers to endure an audible ad: just over a penny.

One. Penny.

Unlike sidebar advertising or paid reviews, readers can’t skip audible ads. Sure, they can turn their volume down if they like, but who the heck are you to force them to do so just so they can read your page?

If a reader is surreptitiously browsing blogs at work — and a very large percentage of my readers do — an audio ad may get them in trouble with the boss. They’ll resent that and they will never visit again. If they’re at home relaxing, you’ve essentially told your readers that your ads deserve to intrude on their time.

It only takes readers one or two visits to confirm that you’ve decided your chance to make money is more important than their time. Hey, you made almost two cents now! But what price over the long run? Those two cents you made very likely just cost you one reader.

Want to run automatically-playing audio or visual ads? Then your first question should be how many readers do you have to spare?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Make Money Blogging. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Tagged in: advertisers | audio ads | blog | bloggers | blogs | Make Money Blogging | paid blogging | video ads

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