If you follow our monthly IZEA Loco celebrations, you might remember the awesome team spirit Tina displayed at March's IZEA Loco? No? You don't recall? Then you might want to revisit the post "Ted Murphy in training?" Go ahead, I'll wait.
Now you remember? Well, I'm obligated to let you know Tina's at it again, and this time-a-round I'm convinced she's going to not only set a new trend in the fashion industry, but simultaneously bring social media to the forefront of all media formats. I'm not joking! Pretty soon we're going to see women--and perhaps a few men--wearing "Sparky nails all over the globe.
I think it's safe to say Tina loves being a part of the IZEA Team...and she's not afraid to show it! Think you can beat-out Tina with your IZEA spirit? Bring it on! Send us your photos of "Sparky nails" or if you have any other clever ways of showing your spirit. Who knows, maybe we'll add an "IZEA Spirit Wall" to accompany our "Great Wall of Posties" and Postie-cards.
In January of this year I made a bet with members of our team. The bet was that dollar for dollar the long tail and sponsored posts were a better advertising investment than display ads on an "A-List" blog. I knew what the performance was through our network and had seen what the "A-Listers" were charging for display ads. I decided to plunk down some money and see if I was right.
I first tried to buy advertising on TechCrunch to prove my point, but when Mike Arrington declined I went looking for a comparable property. I thought about Mashable and even Calacanis.com, but we ultimately purchased a one month campaign on the ultra popular tech website ReadWriteWeb.com, of which I a personally a fan and consider to be "A-List" material . We decided to promote the then new IZEARanks.com website we had recently launched. The one month 125x125 display ad ran us $3,000.
We also purchased 220 Sponsored Posts at a cost of $2970 including all the fees an outside advertiser would pay. The PPP Opportunities for this comparison were Run of Network, allowing virtually any blogger to write about us, no matter how small the blog. All posts included in-post disclosure badges and no-follow links.
Here are the results:
ReadWriteWeb.com
Over the one month period our media buy on ReadWriteWeb delivered 725 visits according to Google Analytics.
PayPerPost.com
Over the same one-month period sponsored posts on PPP network blogs delivered 696 visits from the no-follow in-post links, and an additional 136 visits from the required disclosure badge. The PayPerPost total for the same first month was 832 visits.
One of the benefits I have touted about sponsored posts is the fact that they deliver value long after your posts are paid for. I made two purchases on PPP, one on February 5 and one on February 7th. Those media buys are still paying dividends three months later, adding another 105 clicks for a total of 937 clicks so far. When my money ran out on my ReadWriteWeb media buy I stopped seeing the benefits immediately.
This is a graph from SocialSpark demonstrating CPC over time for a Sponsored Post campaign.
If you equate Visits to CPC we can start to compare our two media buys. ReadWriteWeb ran $4.31/click while PPP has run $3.16/click to date (realize that this will continue to go down over time). I will admit, those PPP numbers are some of the worst I have seen in a sponsored post campaign. Typically we see a CPC in the range of $.60-1.20 after the first 30 days, but I decided to do this RON without any segmentation. I should have been more selective and chosen some segmentation.
While creating SocialSpark we recognized that there is a fundamental flaw with advertiser value representation in PPP. We allow advertisers to create opportunities in the system and drive traffic to their site, but only report back clicks received from sponsored posts. The result is a lot of free traffic for the advertiser that is never reflected in their PPP stats or in their site analytics. In addition to the 937 clicks above, a bare minimum of 220 bloggers were exposed to the site (most likely 500+). That adds at least another 220 clicks to our numbers (TOTAL 1157) and drops our CPC lower.
Engaging the Blogger
Clicks are one thing, but engagement is another. 220 Bloggers took the time to write 250 words or more about our Opportunity. They had to visit the site, explore it, potentially sign-up and write an educated post about their findings. Display ads will never drive that kind of engagement.
Engaging the reader
Not only did we directly engage 220 bloggers, but our blog reader engagement was much higher as well. On average a reader delivered from ReadWriteWeb spent 2:58 on our site, with a 38.90% bounce rate. A reader delivered from a PPP network blog spent 5:39 on our site, with a 21.26% bounce rate. This is because people clicking links in sponsored posts have a genuine interest in the site they are clicking through to.
Conclusion : The LongTail Rules
While "A-List" blogs may be able to deliver high volumes of display advertising inventory, sponsored posts on hundreds of "longtail" blogs are capable of delivering advertisers a stronger value short term, and offer a long term value not available through any form of display ads offered by the A-Listers.
Well..... Maybe. Here is The Real Question.
The thing I still don't know is what happens when you mix an "A-List" blog with sponsored content. ReadWriteWeb could very well have blown these numbers out of the water with a single post on their ultra-popular blog. Its a great blog with great content, I would probably click on an honest sponsored post with clear disclosure.
If any "A-Listers" are up for a little experiment I would love to hear from you. Robert Scoble, Pete Cashmore, heck.... Jason Calacanis drop me a line. Maybe it's the network, maybe it's the ad unit. Right now we only know that display ads on big blogs suck just as bad as they do on other big sites. I am more than happy to drop $3,000 on a single post and see what happens compared to a $3000 SocialSpark Campaign launched at the same time.
Technorati Tags: a-list, arrington, longtail, mashable, pete cashmore, readwriteweb, techcrunch
If so you may very well wind up with a cool $250 in your pocket at the end of this month. Here's the dealio. The blogger profile with the most profile views according to their SocialSpark profile page at midnight May 31 will get a cool $250 cash. Not bad eh? Good luck to you all, I hope that traffic drive mores Opps for everyone.
Do you know what Saturday May 10th is? Yes, it IS the day before Mother's Day (so get those flowers ordered now if you haven't yet), but it is also National Stamp Out Hunger day! This event, co-sponsored by Campbell's Soup Company & the National Association of Letter Carriers, is the US's largest single day food drive. Most US Post Offices are participating, but unfortunately not all are able to. If you've received a flyer from your local post office, you know yours IS participating. If you haven't received a flyer, you can check with your local post office to find out if they are.
Now all you have to do is gather food to donate - non-perishable items like canned meats and fish, canned soup, juice, pasta, vegetables, cereal and rice. Next, leave them by your mailbox before your mail carrier stops by on Saturday May 10. If you're concerned the food will be sitting out too long in the hot sun or on a rainy day, you may also drop the food off at any participating Post Office. C'mon - it's Saturday! You can fit it in somewhere in your schedule of grabbing your morning coffee, picking up the dry cleaning and going to see Ironman! And just that quickly, you've done a good deed for the day :)
The Post Offices will collect all the donations & deliver them to local food banks! If you'd like to pass this along to folks at work, there are some great flyers at the Stamp Out Hunger Site.
The first three weeks of SocialSpark have been absolutely amazing. We have broken every benchmark we set with launch of PayPerPost and then some. Blogger and Advertiser reception has been strong, but I also want to acknowledge that we have a long way to go and there is much room for improvement.
One of the biggest complaints that we have had is about blog sponsorships. Specifically, bloggers were complaining that the bottom bar was too big and the SocialSpark branding was too prominent. That will change with tomorrow's release. We have shortened the height of the sponsorship bar and made the SocialSpark branding less visible. Here is the before:
And here is the after:
We have reduced the bar by 22 pixels which allows for more content on smaller monitors while still putting the advertiser front and center. We always have to balance the desires of advertisers with bloggers and readers, I think this is a great solution.
The other request we had was the ability to require or not require the interstitial (which we call the blog welcome). This feature has been part of SocialSpark for some time, but not every advertiser may know this. You set that feature on the first page of the create blog sponsorship page, section 3.
I hope you all like the new bar. Keep the feedback coming!
If you plan on joining Veronique and myself today for our weekly live lunch chat, "Lunch with Ash & V," you can find us located at Stickam.com/RockStartUp from 12-1pm EDT. We'll also be Twittering while we chat, and that's at http://twitter.com/IZEAinc.
The April "RockStars of the Month" were announced at this past Friday's IZEA Loco, and we're happy to share them with you here:
Advertiser of the Month:
LikefLock at http://lifelock.com. You may have seen their television spots and wondered what they are all about. Simply put, LifeLock is the industry leader in the rapidly growing field of Identity Theft Protection. If you are interested in learning more about LifeLock, visit their website by clicking here.
Postie of the Month:
Malin Miller! Malin currently owns and operates two blogs, one of which is http://www.infektia.net. For more information on Malin, visit her SocialSpark profile.
IZEA RockStar of the Month:
Congratulations go to Crystal, IZEA Junior Account Manager! In addition to all the fame-and-recognition she'll receive from this blog post, Crystal also had the privilege of wearing this "costume" for the remainder of the day:
Technorati Tags: Advertiser of the Month, IZEA Loco, IZEA RockStar of the Month, LifeLock, Postie of the Month
