Blogs and ads have a long way to go
This Wall Street Journal story (subscription required) by Jessica Mintz pinpoints the problems facing advertisers who're eager to get started on advertising on blogs. I think the lack of control over the quality and content is a continuing problem which is why ads only on blog search-related pages may be the only current option at this time:
Gawker Media, one of the biggest brands in Web log publishing, launched a saucy urban travel blog called Gridskipper on Jan. 31. On that day, the logo of the site's sole sponsor, Cendant Corp.'s Cheaptickets, could be found in ads on each page. But by Feb. 3, the company had removed its banners and boxes, leaving empty spaces on some pages [because, according to the founder, the site may have been "too naughty" for Cheaptickets].
Very few of the millions of blogs today have sponsorships or pay-per-click ads, and the numbers aren't very promising:
Most bloggers, like Ronni Bennett, a former television producer who lives in New York's Greenwich Village and writes about aging on timegoesby.net, can't even offset the cost of her Internet access. Her site gets between 1,200 and 1,500 page views a day, bringing in all of $50 since December 2004.