The Next Web

Technorati acquires a place to show ads, called BlogCritics

Written on August 26, 2008 – 5:41 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

It hasn’t appeared on the Technorati blog yet, but Michael Arrington broke the news: Technorati has acquired BlogCritics, a 6-year old blog network that draws around 1 million unique monthly visitors who watch 3 to 4 million pages.

In June, Technorati launched a blog advertising network called Technorati Media. CEO Richard Jalichandra wrote in the announcing blog post that “over the next several months, we’ll be adding blogs from the mid and long tail within those verticals.” Seems like he did just now, only in a slightly less orthodox way.

Where one would expect Technorati to focus on some sort of affiliate program, it just buys a network which gives them enough space and pageviews to place ads on. According to Crunchbase, BlogCritics has published 73,000 articles from 2,300 authors. Exactly, those bloggers are from the mid and long tail.

Jalichandra told Arrington that they will probably acquire more content sites soon. Well, truth be told, it’s a efficient way of building a solid blog ads network, that’s for sure. Although it does bring up an interesting question, is Technorati is a search company, or a media company? When choosing for the latter, who will guarantee me that Technorati search results aren’t biased?

I hope you like that post!

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advertising, advertising network, BlogCritics, Michael Arrington, Richard Jalichandra, search, technorati, Technorati Media

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Technorati and Glam Media shake up online ad industry

Written on June 17, 2008 – 11:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Today was a hefty day for the online ad industry, as two important announcements were made. Technorati has launched an ad network and the utterly successful women-focused ad network Glam Media has acquired Monetise, a London-based digital-ad sales start-up.

Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra (by Brian Solis)

Let’s start with the most exciting one: Technorati has launched an ad network for blogs called Technorati Media. They’ve been privately testing the service the last couple of weeks with several advertisers - including T-Mobile, Toyota, and Verizon - and some core sites who reach an audience of 17 million people. CEO Richard Jalichandra wrote in the announcing blog post that “over the next several months, we’ll be adding blogs from the mid and long tail within those verticals.” If he keeps his promise, this might become an interesting network. As for smaller blogs, there isn’t really an alternative for Google Adwords yet. Let’s just hope that at the same time, Technorati will keep improving it’s blog search engine - since it has been pretty slow lately. The recently raised $10 million will probably help.

Speaking of raising money, Glam Media has used its latest staggering round of funding - $85 million dollar - for an acquisition that must help them to “speed the entry into the important U.K. display ad market” - Glam Chairman and CEO Samir Arora said in a release. “Monetise has strong relationships with London advertising agencies and enables Glam to immediately increase its reach in the U.K. market.” All the employees, member sites, and division will be integrated into Glam. Valleywag editor Nicholas Carlson speaks of a “Glam scam” and raises the question whether Glam is still really focused on women sites.

I don’t think Glam minds though, as they’re now operating in a country where the online ad spending is about to take over TV this year.

advertising, Glam, Glam Media, online advertising, Samir Arora, Technorati Media, techorati, united kingdom

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