Steve Green

Established wisdom dictates that blogs are sacred and therefore should remain free from advertising and the kind of commercialism that might warp editorial values and curtail honest, unbiased expression, right?

Set to test this status quo is ebuzzing, a ‘social media advertising’ service from the Wikio stable which has just launched in the UK, aiming to connect bloggers with advertisers for cash.

The concept of ‘blog-vertising’ isn’t anything new, with a raft of companies in the US trying to carve out market share, whilst ebuzzing itself launched its French HQ back in 2006.

As an advertising channel the blogshere makes total sense as certain blogs not only boast a valuable and rich list of subscribers, but have also developed an authority, making bloggers such a highly sought after commodity for advertisers.

In Europe, ebuzzing has already run campaigns for the likes of ebay, Diesel, Mastercard, Microsoft and Toyota, and with such high profile brands on board should bloggers here have anything to fear from the company landing in the UK?

How does it work?

Once registered, bloggers are able to select which campaign they would like to participate in, based upon their interests and likes. Brands are then able to engage with these social media communities through video broadcasting, ethical and disclosed sponsored conversation, widget seeding and forum conversation. By paying bloggers for their work, based upon pre agreed campaign parameters and a blog’s Wikio ranking, ebuzzing ensures accountability and scale.

What is great about blog-vertising, or social media advertising in the case of ebuzzing, is that it is up to the blogger whether they deem the campaigns on offer both relevant and interesting to their community. Should they decide in the positive, then it is a win-win, as the author earns and the brand benefits.

Compared with banner advertising and even search, blog-vertising offers an advertising channel though which sponsored content can be broadcast to an incredibly targeted audience as bloggers live or die based on the relevance of the content they post.

Paul Coggins, the UK’s newly appointed MD, ebuzzing said: “ebuzzing simultaneously determines a blog’s authority and gives advertisers a previously unavailable route through which to mine the online universe and ultimately engage with their consumers. Uniquely, our relationship with the Wikio Group also gives our advertisers access to Europe’s largest pool of influential blogs and delivers a clear benefit to all those in this particular value-chain.”

With the rules and perceived etiquette around social media and advertising constantly evolving, ebuzzing should be commended for creating a service which not only recognises and respects the unique requirements of blogger, advertiser and audience, but actually monetises the whole process. What is more, ebuzzing already has an impressive pedigree with some serious backing. The company is the B2B part of the Wikio group and led by Kelkoo founder, Pierre Chappaz which was sold to Yahoo! in 2004 for EUR475 million.

About the author and ebuzzing

Steve Green is a director at PR and social media agency, infomob, which represents ebuzzing. ebuzzing is a platform for bringing bloggers and advertisers together. It is based on a simple principle: Like. Recommend. Earn. It allows bloggers to monetise their blog, earning money by creating posts about things they genuinely like and want to recommend, whilst advertisers can create buzz for themselves in the communities that are most likely to be interested in them. It has the ambition of creating a pan-European marketplace where advertisers and microsite creators can meet.

www.ebuzzing.com