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Sponsored, But Good

Feb 18, 2009 at 1:35 PM by Yaron Galai | No Comments | Permalink

How about an advertising program that brings benefit to the reader, the publisher and the advertiser!  Our new program called Sponsored, But Good is designed to do exactly this.  If you’re like most people, you’d probably agree that you rarely find ads you see online interesting. Unlike ads on search engines which
appear in response to your search query, ads on content pages tend to
be unappealing and intrusive.  Since we’ve
based our entire company on bringing  readers of content useful links
to other recommended content, we thought: why can’t ads be just as
interesting and engaging?

Our thinking goes like this: readers come to your blog or site to read. They are looking for other great stories to read, which is why the engagement rates on the recommendations we provide today are so high. So through Sponsored, But Good, advertisers can now participate in bringing your readers interesting content by sponsoring the distribution of great, interesting stories about their brands. There are millions (well, at least many thousands!) of wonderful articles and blog posts that have positive, authentic things to say about specific brands and products. These authentic endorsements are often written simply because the author loved some aspect of the product or service. Sponsored, But Good allows advertisers to promote great, authentic endorsements of their product or service to readers who may be interested in the message.

Today we are launching  the beta version of the program and you will see advertisers starting to populate the system over the next few months.

What will the sponsored recommendations look like on my blog?
Advertisers will pay for the recommendations to be distributed, and not for the content itself.  These sponsored recommendations are clearly marked with an icon as shown below.  Upon mousing over the “i” icon, the color changes to indicate it’s clickable and when clicked, a bubble appears informing the reader that the distribution of the link is sponsored and not the content itself.

(this is a ficticious example as GM is not yet a client)

Upon clicking the above link the reader will go to this public page on CNBC’s site.  As you can see the author, Phil LeBeau is speaking favorable about his test ride in the Volt;

VentureBeat covered the release.

Posted in For Marketers, For Publishers, Outbrain, But Good, new product, product launch, Sponsored, Sponsored Posts, sponsored recommendations| No Comments