It's becoming increasingly tempting. One possibility is Google’s AdSense, discussed in today's NYT. It seems pretty painless. AdSense puts ads on the blog like those that appear next to other Google search results and Gmail and pays according to how many people click on the ads. No figuring out the technology, no running down advertisers.
The article expects Google to promote this bigtime because it has more revenue growth potential than its search business – people are already searching about as much as they can, but many websites don’t yet carry these ads. For example, Google’s started allowing advertisers to run ads on large numbers of sites.
Should I join the crowd?
Here’s what I resolved on New Year’s 2005:
2. No ads, ever (other than for myself, of course). Now, I love the commercial world and the freedom and material comfort it's brought us. But at least aesthetically it's nice to get a break from ads every once in awhile, and I don't want any temptation to build my audience for the ad money. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with having a big audience (and not that I would know how that feels anyway), but sometimes what you have to write about to get that audience gets you off of what you should be writing about (see 3).
There’s also the temptation to write about things that maximize ads – as the NYT article suggests: “since advertisers in certain categories, like sexual-performance drugs, pay much more to place their ads on Google and its affiliated sites, you might expect technology discussions to randomly veer in that direction.”
The temptation wouldn’t be great for me because there’s not much money there, at least yet. But then the question is, why bother, especially since the ads affect the aesthetics.
The ads also have a negative signaling effect: even if I’m not tempted by the commercial aspects, my readers might suspect I am, which reduces credibility.
And would I be tempted to blog too much? Of course a benefit of blog advertising is that it provides incentives to produce socially valuable information. But the incentive may be perverse for people like me, who have (sort of) a day job they're supposed to be doing. For academic bloggers, I think the day and night jobs converge. That may be less true for those who sell ads.
More generally, what is the future of blog advertising? I discuss various aspects of this in my Law and Economics of Blogging (significantly revised and extended version coming soon). Among other things, ads add legal complications. For example, advertising revenue complicates both sharing and vicarious liability issues in group blogs.
Nevertheless, I think blog advertising will grow. I suspect commercial and non-commercial blogs will diverge into distinct categories. The former already includes several models, including advertising-sale networks, magazine-format group blogs, and blog networks.
How important will the AdSense model be? I think very. The advantage of AdSense, like Google’s other products, is that it replaces intentional self-categorization with search technology. Instead of bloggers having to form groups or shape their message in order to attract advertisers, AdSense lets advertisers “find” the appropriate blogs. In this way it enables individuals to both be commercial and stay relatively independent. Although, as discussed above, there may be some incentive to reach particular advertisers, Google’s technology allows every message to find a market, rather than requiring the blogger to shape her message to reach a particular group of advertisers.
So I expect my “pure” approach to become increasingly idiosyncratic. Just call me "the last of the independents."
Update: Gordon Smith questions my point about advertising clouding credibility, noting that when he checked only three of the top 50 blogs were ad free. Gordon suggests this indicates that credibility survives ads, as indicated by the traffic.
But "credibility" is a hazy concept, perhaps not readily susceptible to a quick and dirty market test. For example, I know from experience that I could increase readers by, for example, blogging more generally on Supreme Court nominations. The fact that I'm accepting ads probably wouldn't turn my new readers off, or make any of my readers suspect that I'm not telling the truth, or what I think, about Alito. But it might make me say more about Alito than I would otherwise say, which might make some of my readers wonder whether I'm talking about Alito because it ties in with my intellectual focus, or rather because it maximizes readers. This, in turn, might cause them to question my selection of topics generally. It's not a big deal, but then either is the advertising money.
Moreover, there's a self-binding aspect here. It's just not worth my time to spout about Supreme Court nominations generally (though I have, of course, gotten into Alito's business decisions, which does relate to what I do). Might I be tempted to waste my time if there's a little money in it? That would be short-sighted, but then greed often is.
Let me emphasize that I love markets, advertising and greed. I would defend all three to the death. In fact, I'm not talking about opting out of markets, but rather shaping my market in a particular way that requires avoiding advertising.
By the way, Gordon, I'm not planning to sell ads.
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