Blog Advertising Exposed

25 May, 2006. 328 words.

How profitable is punditry? The other day I was ragging on Michelle Malkin for forcing me go to her ad-driven page. She uses the “big name” advertisers like Doubleclick and Fastclick. But on many other punditry blogs, I noted that they run ads from a place called BlogAds. Well today I took a look at BlogAds and found their price list. Here’s how much it costs today (May 25, 2006) for advertising space on various popular political blogs:

DailyKos — $4200, $2750, $1800 (4,000k)
Crooks and Liars — $995, $750 (1,500k)
Talking Points Memo — $4000, $1500, $750, $750 (1000k)
RealClearPolitics — $1500 (780k)
Americablog — $1210, $695 (700k)
Power Line — $1200, $500, $225 (460k)
Hot Air — $440, $80 (420k)
RedState — $1200, $500 (300k)
MyDD — $390, $285 (295k)
Drudge — $90 (242k)
Captain’s Quarters — $70, $50 (220k)
Ace of Spades HQ — $100 (142k)

The number in parenthesis at the end is roughly the maximum number of pageviews the ad receives, as cited by BlogAds (ie., roughly how many people will see the ad). The price cited is for 1 week of advertising.

As you can see, the netroots kids at DailyKos are pulling in about $455,000 a year. Of course, I’m sure a percentage of that money goes to BlogAds. But you get the idea: Don’t think for one second that Markos is as idealistic as he sounds — he’s in it for the money, plain and simple, along with every other blogger on that list.

(Incidentally, we can also see that liberal blogs get a lot more pageviews than conservative blogs. I don’t glean much from that except what we already knew — that conservatives are generally older and thus not as tech-savvy. I also noted that Drudge is practically giving away advertising, perhaps as a conservative evangelistic maneuver?)

(Also just for the record, no I wouldn’t turn down $455,000/year just to write down a couple thoughts a day, either. :)

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