Jul
11
Just received an email from ReviewMe, a competitor of the infamous PayPerPost (with the main difference being that ReviewMe always had a disclosure policy - same principle, though).Their newest way to undermine the blogosphere is called Advertorials.
The basic premise is that now you don’t even have to write the spam post yourself - the advertiser will do it for you. They have an example up here.
For Advertisers:
You control the message. Enter up to 250 words including links back to your website and also an image of your choice.
You can login and get full impression and click tracking on your campaign.
You choose which top blogs to place your Advertorial.
For bloggers, things are even easier - just copy and past a piece of code to your blog and you are done. Everything is fine and dandy, of course, because the post will say SPONSORED POST at the top.
Here is the rest of the announcement:
We think our RM Advertorial will revolutionize the paid blogging world by giving advertisers complete control over their messaging, along with a branding opportunity and the reporting metrics they have come to expect with traditional online media buys. Bloggers will also benefit from an additional revenue source to supplement ReviewMe’s suite of offerings. You can view a live Advertorial here. For more information and to order Advertorials visit ReviewMe!
Wow. I have no problem with advertising on blogs (hell, I do it myself after all). But letting the advertiser write the blog post for you? I don’t get the people who write for ReviewMe and PayPerPost, and given that they write for these companies, they probably have no interest in remaining believable, but letting a company write the post for you just seems to take things a step to far.
Update: Just noticed Mashable also wrote about this - couldn’t agree more:
Could it be an effective marketing tactic? Probably not. Most readers would disregard a sponsor post entirely, and could put the blogger and their reputation in jeopardy as a result.
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