A Bit About Mediaite’s Advertising

By Matt Van Hoven 

After our brief conversation with Steve Krakauer and Glynnis MacNicol of Mediaite on the Menu today, I was curious to learn more about the site’s plans for advertising. A quick Q/A with Managing Editor Colby Hall is below. To sum it up, scratch-n-sniff banners will be implemented.

Matt: I’ve seen the banner ads from HBO, can we expect other forms of traditional online advertising to pop up?

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Colby Hall: Great question &#151 its a little early to release this officially but we ARE experimenting with a new feature called Real Odorio, which will offer wonderful scents with each ad unit (I know &#151 FINALLY!) But to be honest we really haven’t spent much time thinking of other forms of online advertising. Our existing relationships with sponsors includes a pretty robust offering (email sponsorships, once a week site site wraps, banners.) But, right now we’re more focused on making the site better, and trying to reach that elusive AgencySpy audience. We do hope that our advertising revenue will grow.

He knows so much about you guys!

Matt: A recent addition to the online advertising repertoire is sponsored content. Mediaite’s first foray into the new practice involves a piece about Twitter from DKC Public Relations’ SVP Krista Pilot. DKC is also a “strategic partner” of Abrams Research. That fact isn’t disclosed in the article. Why?

Colby Hall: If we’d just posted that as an editorial piece, then, yeah, I would see that as a germane question. But its clearly labeled as Sponsored Content! This sort of thing exists on the New York Times every day, or in nearly every media form. And by the way, doesn’t every media outlet have a strategic partnership with their advertisers? For example, you sometimes open your often entertaining “The Week in Advertising” vid with an advertisement (Full Sail University), including your own promotional tag at the top of the piece. They give you money which helps fund your production and because it benefits their strategic goals. Where is YOUR disclosure!?!

(Ed’s note: It’s in the show! Yes, we’ve been sponsored by Full Sail. Their ads are regularly seen here in banners, and once they sponsored The Week in Advertising. It was episode 19, pasted below, and we clearly labeled it as an ad. But, Full Sail never got an editorial spot to write any copy, in story-like format on our site, so…More importantly, Colby seems to watch our show. Awesome!)

Matt: Regarding the Power Grid: I’ve done some clicking around and searched for the advertising media professionals/publications I’d expect to see listed there. Aside from a couple top people, advertising as a media is largely under-represented. Why? Can we expect the 1,479 people/publications to increase?

Colby Hall: There are a long list of things that aren’t perfect about the Power Grid, and yes, we’d like to add more names. It has seemed to captured [sic] some attention and our hope is that the interest in it lasts longer than a couple of days. If the system works as we know it can, the names will change based on a regular basis so it will be a lot more fluid than most rankings &#151 that’s the goal. All I can say is that we’ve got big plans for growing the Power Grid, namely we intend to release numbers via a team of sky-writing Jet Packs, but I’ve already revealed far too much.

Hmm, Mr. Hall watches our show but didn’t think we were important enough to add to the Power Grid. Sad faces abound. So now that we’ve had half of Mediaite’s editorial staff on the site today, we’ll give the site time to breathe, cough a little and stretch its legs. The eternal question they’ll have to deal with is: will Abrams Research in any way influence the content on the homepage? Already, it seems as though the case is, “sort of.” But it’s labeled “Sponsored Content” which for all intents and purposes indemnifies the site of any ill-will. Does it matter that DKC is also a strategic partner of Abrams Research? Only you can say.

Update: We are asked to clarify that DKC and SVP Krista Pilot didn’t get editorial placement on Mediaite. It’s labeled “Sponsored Content”. But in reading the piece, it’s very, how do you say &#151 “this is what KP thinks” hence our misuse of the word editorial.


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More: “Today on the Menu: Mediaite’s Steve Krakauer and Glynnis MacNicol


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