Site-Wide Sponsorships Available

I'm happy to welcome FeedBlitz's first ever site-wide sponsor, Vistaprint. Vistaprint will be sponsoring the feedblitz.com site for the next two weeks, and all our ad-funded email inventory for this working week. A huge thank you and welcome to them. Check out their services!

FeedBlitz has sponsorship packages available for the web site and also for our email inventory, which is tens of millions of impressions per month; Feedblitz.com is currently ranked 6,926 globally and 2,512 in the USA according to Alexa.

Site and email sponsorships are available by the week, month or quarter according to your needs. We also have a profile on Atlas if that's how you like to research your ad buys.

Interested? If your company would like to follow in Vistaprint's steps and sponsor FeedBlitz, please contact me. The holidays are coming up, let's not forget. Reserve your space now.

   

FeedBlitz Email Ad Network Adds Banner & Image Ads

If a picture speaks a thousand words then this new addition to our newsletter ad network is good news. FeedBlitz now supports IAB Universal Ad Package banner ads. Pricing is similar to text ads, except that the CPM rate a banner ad is charged at depends on the number of text ads it displaces, so all banners start at $4 CPM except for the 468 pixel wide banner, which is $2 CPM (it only displaces two text ads).

Agencies, networks and direct buyers interested in a media kit should email me at our info@ address.

   

Mailvertise your blog!

If there's one thing bloggers like it's to see your blog's circulation grow. And now you can use FeedBlitz ads to give your circulation efforts a boost. We've tuned the ad creation screen to let you pick your blog's subscription page as the landing page for the ad (that's the place a reader will be sent to when they click your ad). So promoting subscriptions to your blog just became a whole lot easier:



We also added a handy-dandy "test" button, so regardless of whether you're sending readers to a subscription page or to a different location, you get the chance to preview it before you save the ad.

All ads for your blog offer our comprehensive features, including the ability to target your to one or more channels, to different locations (including Zip codes in the US), and to keywords.

So start boosting your circulation now - and if you do before December 31st, 2007, you'll be able to get our end of year bonus too.

   

Holiday Advertiser Bonus - up to $25

To mark the start of the holiday season here in the US, FeedBlitz is now offering new and renewing advertisers an advertising bonus of up to $25 between now and the end of the year.

If your next advertising charge between now and December 31 is between $25 and $99 we will credit your account with an extra $10. So your $25 ad spend becomes worth $35, even though you're only charged $25.

If your next charge is $100 or more, your bonus is $25.

Current advertisers will receive the bonus when their credit cards are next charged (provided it's before 1/1/08 US eastern time). New advertisers get the bonus immediately once your credit card is approved. Advertiser bonuses are awarded once per advertising account - subsequent charges will credit your advertising account as normal - and the offer expires at the end of the year.

So, start your email advertising campaign now in time for the Holiday rush and take advantage of this year-end offer to get more from your ad spend. It's time-limited and will not be renewed at the end of the year.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

   

EMail Advertising Network Update

For advertisers setting up newsletter ads, we've completely revamped the ad setup code to be a more friendly, simplified sequence of screens. It's much easier to get started now, and we've added help along the way where early feedback showed it was necessary. So, go on - give it a try! You can set up a targeted ad campaign in less than five minutes. We've also updated the advertiser FAQs to make things clearer.

We've also improved our ad targeting algorithms, with today being the first full day of use. The net result is that advertisers should see improved CTR (click through rates) and better average ad positions while spending slightly less per day. Seems to be working too: Across the whole ad network, average CTR is up 40%, but the effective CPC (cost per click) is down nearly 20%. The whole thing just became more effective and even better value.

Meanwhile, what are the earning opportunities for bloggers and newsletter publishers? At the moment, if your blog or newsletter covers sport, outdoor activities or travel, we have a lot of activity in these categories and you should opt in to the network to make the most of it.

For advertisers, the US is starting to getting more crowded, but if you want to target subscribers in Latin America, Australia or India, a basic minimum $1 bid will still get you into the top two slots if you start now (otherwise someone else will beat you to it and you'll have to outbid them to get the leading spaces).

Finally, we have added a new set of email alerts for advertisers. Advertisers will get an email when:

• Their ad falls to a position of 4 or worse (on average, across all newsletters)
• Your ad slips a whole position (e.g. from a 2.x average to a 3.y average)

A worse position (as indicated by the average position, position 1 is the best) means that your ad became a little less likely to be read or clicked on. So if you get one of these, review your reports and decide whether you need to alter your bid.

We have also added an email alert for advertisers who haven't completed campaign configuration. You'll get an alert the day after you started the process, and then just one more a few days later if you're still not done. After that we consider the ad abandoned.

   

Announcing The FeedBlitz Ad Network!

Now you can monetize your mailing list.

Now you can target ads to committed subscribers, not just casual web site visitors.

The FeedBlitz ad network is now up and running. Using a unique CPM-auction model (see the new advertiser FAQs), FeedBlitz now enables targeted in-content advertising to opted in publishers and bloggers by location, content category and keyword.

Bloggers and businesses alike can start to earn revenues from their mailings by activating their account for advertising in just 2 clicks.

Fully featured, all features available in a single interface, we aim for this ad network to do for email newsletters what Google AdSense and AdWords did for democratizing online web advertising.

• To advertise, go to www.feedblitz.com/f?Ads
• To earn by running ads in your newsletter, go to www.feedblitz.com/f?AdPublisher

The FAQs have been updated, with comprehensive new pages for Advertiser FAQs and Blogger / Publisher FAQs. In addition, the terms of service have been updated to incorporate the ad program.

So go on - what are you waiting for? Let's get started.

   

More About the Upcoming FeedBlitz Email Ad Market

In last week's summary I briefly mentioned our plans to make good on our commitment to help bloggers make money from their mailing lists. What FeedBlitz is building is an ad program - an entire ad market, in fact - that will do for mailing lists what Google's AdSense and AdWords did for web sites.

The thing is, we didn't want to do this. We would much rather have worked with an existing ad program that was email friendly, would readily allow us to share revenues with our publishers, and that could work with the Web 2.0 long tail.

It didn't exist.

So, if we're to build an ad market, we have a unique opportunity to build an ideal program, that not only works for FeedBlitz as a business, but also works for publishers and advertisers alike. That brings the best of the self-serve, affordable model that proved so successful for Google on the web with AdSense / AdWords, but simplifies the process and makes it more transparent.

Today we just deployed the second phase of our ad beta that delivers on the first steps on this vision. Here's what we're delivering:

• A single sign on solution for both bloggers and advertisers - all functions in the same GUI.
• Simple text ad building, just like AdWords.
• Auction based CPM pricing for advertisers.
• No guessing about bids: A transparent market, with public bid pricing.
• Targeting by keyword, location (to the zip code in the US) and / or category.
• Campaign and account-wide budgeting.
• Simple set up - no graphics expertise required.
• Revenue generating house ads.
• Affordable entry points.

Bloggers can easily earn money from the market too:

• One-click setup - no scripts to insert, no templates to edit. Click and Earn.
• Flexible positioning, including auto-placement of ads inside the text.
• Ability to exclude competitor domains and inappropriate content.
• Low payout thresholds so you can be paid sooner rather than later.
• Upgrade rewards: Premium publishers will get a greater share of the revenues.

There's a lot more to it than this, of course. For example, your subscribers know you blog about a variety of topics. What's relevant to them is going to be related to everything you write about, not just that particular day's articles. So we take that into account as well. And if you're a professional media buyer, we'll have good news for you as well shortly after we launch.

So are you ready to monetize your mailing list? Are you ready to reach blog subscribers with your ads?

Then be ready. Subscribe to the FeedBlitz Ad Market Update. Once the email ad market comes out of beta and goes live - by the end of this month - you'll get an email from FeedBlitz telling you how to sign up and start earning.

   

All Features for All Publishers and All Subscribers

I recently blogged that the FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition has had a quick uptake among professional publishers. However, premium pricing, although it has a low entry point, has put its features beyond the reach of many non-commercial bloggers. That's a shame. So we’ve decided to fix it. FeedBlitz will now enable Newsletter Edition’s full-functionality free of charge to all publishers in exchange for small FeedBlitz-sourced ads in their messages (see below for info on what they look like and when they'll appear).

FeedBlitz message volume has grown to the point where it is attracting the attention of potential advertisers. These services recognize the value of the targeted delivery that requested email content offers. FeedBlitz is their only practical opportunity to buy placement in the email sent from thousands of blogs to millions of subscribers each month. The combination of FeedBlitz’s growth and the evolution of these services means that we can now use ads to fund the services and features - capabilities that we could previously only offer by charging a fee.

It is important to note that FeedBlitz is neither selling nor revealing subscriber email addresses – there is no change in our privacy policy. In particular, ads will only be distributed as part of the content the subscriber specifically asked for from that publisher or article source. Nothing else is changing. Subscribers can still terminate any subscription at any time.

Effective on a rolling schedule (again, see more below), there will be just one, fully-featured version of FeedBlitz: Newsletter Edition. Publishers using our free services will be automatically upgraded to use this service, and in exchange we will place what we believe are relatively unobtrusive ads (see below for how to see some samples). Or, publishers can pay on a sliding scale based on the number of subscribers, and avoid having any ads appear at all. Existing premium publishers will not have ads placed in their content, nor will their payments change, regardless of the plan they’re on. Consistent functionality, ad or fee-funded, is a model that has worked well for many other “freemium” services and we believe the new capabilities it enables will work well for all our publishers, their subscribers and FeedBlitz.

For premium (i.e. paying) publishers, we’ll sweeten the deal further. In a couple of months, after we complete some technical changes, we plan to offer revenue sharing on ads we source. Publishers will then be able monetize their mailing lists using FeedBlitz, delivering a brand new revenue stream for their blog or site.

These are, obviously, significant changes. So what exactly are our plans, how might they affect you, what will you see, and when?

Free Service Publishers

• Your service will be upgraded on September 14 to an ad-supported version of FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition.
• You’ll be able use Newsletter Edition to tailor the email’s look and feel, adjust delivery schedules, offer Skype, AIM and Twitter subscriptions, collect and use subscriber demographic data, and more.
• Newsletter Edition gives you a major boost in capabilities at no charge which you can take advantage of as your time allows; no new action is required of you.
• After September 14 we’ll be retiring the standard, less functional “Personal Edition”

Premium Publishers

• You will not have ads placed by FeedBlitz in emails to your subscribers.
• We plan to introduce optional revenue sharing programs for premium publishers in the future which will give you an opportunity to profit in a new way from your blog or site.
• If you are on a “Pro” or “Turbo” plan your services and payment schedule will stay as they are until you upgrade to Newsletter Edition (or cancel, and thereby automatically upgrade to the ad-supported version).

Premium Subscribers

• You will not have ads placed in the emails generated for you as part of your Turbo Subscriber upgrade.

Subscribers who Subscribed Through a Publisher

• As always, the content you receive is determined by the publisher of the content you subscribed to.
• If the publisher allows FeedBlitz to place ads in emails, then FeedBlitz supplied ads will appear in the mail you’re already getting.
• You will not receive any email from us that was not originated by your publisher or our “email to a friend” capability.

Subscribers who Subscribed Directly

• If you set up your subscription directly with FeedBlitz rather than through a FeedBlitz-enabled publisher, the email you will receive will contain small ads.
• You will now be able to modify the delivery schedule of your email subscriptions, a feature you previously would have had to pay for.
• You will not receive any email from us that did not originate from the content source.

Advertisers

• Contact FeedBlitz to find out about how to take advantage of our upcoming advertising programs and the targeting we can offer.

Privacy

• Our privacy policy has not changed.
• The confidentiality of your email address is critical.
• In particular, we have not - and never - share your email address with the ad network(s) we use nor any third party except the publishers you subscribe to (unless you elect to be anonymous to them) or as required by legal action.

What will the ads look like?

• Ads will be small “taglines” discreetly placed just above the unsubscribe footer as appropriate.
• If you get this email from the main “FeedBlitz News” syndication, scroll down to see the ad (if not, please subscribe by going to www.feedblitz.com/f?Sub=84 )
• If you view this online, go to www.feedblitz.com/f?PreviewFeed=84 and scroll to the bottom to see the ad.

What if I don’t want ads and I don’t want to pay to remove them?

We’ve been running these ads in limited form for 4 weeks now. They’re being successful, and we haven’t had any objections from the publishers or their readership about them. We’d urge you to try them out as we take the capability live and take advantage of all the exciting and powerful features that FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition will give you for a while.

But, if after reviewing everything you really, really can’t stand it and don’t want to become a premium publisher, that’s OK. We respect that decision. Since FeedBlitz is a fully open system, here are the ways to export your data:

• To export your publications, log in to your account at http://www.feedblitz.com/ and pick My Account Advanced My Syndications Export to OPML.
• To export your subscriptions, pick My Account Advanced My Subscriptions Export to OPML
• To export your subscribers, pick My Account Advanced My Subscribers Export to Text

Of course, we offer corresponding import features for publishers wanting to take advantage of FeedBlitz’s powerful HTML email newsletter edition features.

When will these changes take place?

• For standalone subscriptions (ones where there is no corresponding FeedBlitz publisher account), ads will start appearing Thursday night, August 30.
• For existing publishers using FeedBlitz’s free service, upgrades to the ad-supported Newsletter Edition will take place Friday, September 14.

All Features for All Publishers and All Subscribers

Enabling ad-support lets us offer full functionality to all publishers and subscribers and not just those who pay a premium (does this make us the first service to upgrade our free users this comprehensively?). Advertisers benefit from a channel where their ads accompany requested content rather than arriving as uninvited spam. Plus, having a single set of capabilities for everyone will also allow us to simplify the web site, making FeedBlitz easier to use for everyone.