Jake Wengroff Global Director, Corporate Communications Frost & Sullivan

Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare dominate marketing and media news headlines today, but let’s not forget the folks who lit the match that started the social flame: bloggers.

“Blog readers are a special breed–they’re the propagators and synapses of opinion, influence, and information,” says John Musci, a representative for Blogads, an advertising network.

Advertisers realized their opportunity to harness the clout and increasing audience size of bloggers and their readers about six years ago. But here we are in 2010, and while digital advertising budgets have shown signs of life, it is still a Herculean task to buy inventory directly from these independent publishers/writers. As such, the blog advertising network was created to serve the needs of the corporate marketer as well as that of the individual blogger.

Marketers should take a deeper look at today’s blog advertising networks to learn how to extract more value from their offerings. They will be pleased to find alternatives to traditional banner advertising and the opportunity to interact directly with bloggers in creative, influential ways.  

The Rules of Old Media Still Apply…
For advertisers and marketers, the beauty of bloggers is their relative approachability and flexibility. The use of a network provides the technology, service, and metrics to make an advertising spend seamless and accountable.

Critics of the deluge of online social content–tweets, blog posts, videos, podcasts, comments, shares, and “Likes”–say we actually need less media. However, compelling content continues to create an engaged community, regardless of format. In this way, what's old seems new again.

Allowing independent publishers to monetize their work, whether in a part- or full-time capacity, endorses their efforts. Sure, the best blogs are created by people passionate about a particular subject–food, home improvement, music, movies, politics, parenting, fashion, gadgets, cars, business, or technology–but an added layer of financial incentive will only make such blogs flourish and, in turn, provide even more compelling content.

Take mommy blogger Jessica Turner. Turner is a member of the blogging elite, covering topics and products of interest to mothers, such as first-time parenthood, balancing work and home-life, photography and memory keeping, and baby product reviews. She blogs at The Mom Creative, and is also the official mommy blogger for Southwest Airlines. Turner says 80 percent of her readers are moms and key decision-makers for their families. She uses a mix of ad network participation, affiliate programs, and direct advertising as a means to generate additional household income through her blog, though she declines to provide specifics. Her blog is so influential that “advertisers have come to me,” she admits.

…But New Players Are Dominating the Space
Still, most bloggers do what they do best for a lot less money than their old-media counterparts. Many of the most-influential blogs on the Internet are delivered by people who simply want to share their ideas with–and influence–an accepting world.

Ah, influence. Influence can mean more ad space inventory–and eyeballs–for marketers. As brands migrate to such influential communities, some of the biggest names in publishing have sought to attach themselves to these growing ranks. For example, domestic brand Martha Stewart–an empire that boasts four magazines, three television shows, a radio broadcast, and nine blogs–launched Martha’s Circle in 2008, “a collection of exceptional lifestyle sites and blogs handpicked by our editors,” according to the site. As such, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the parent company, can associate itself with additional influencers, thereby increasing its ad space inventory and reach.

In addition, IDG Group, parent of Computerworld, InfoWorld, and NetworkWorld magazines, and one of the oldest technology publishers in existence, recently expanded its online coverage to include 250 non-IDG-authored sites. The IDG Tech Network claims 87 million unique visitors.

But besides chasing the big names, marketers also have migrated to newbies. With budgets opening up, tech marketers have become highly interested in newcomer NetShelter Technology Media, a specialized technology blog advertising network. Started in 2006, the branded network now boasts monthly page views greater than that of CBS Interactive’s CNET, and two years ago lured chief publisher Patrick Houston, founding general manager of Yahoo! Tech and former editor-in-chief of CNET. Net Shelter’s network includes such niche sites as MacRumors.com, IntoMobile, PhoneScoop.com, TecheBlog.com, SlashGear.com, PhotographyBlog.com, CrackBerry.com, TGDaily.com, and HowardForums.com. To diversify risk, no single site accounts for more than 5 percent of the traffic on NetShelter’s network.

Blog ad networks continue to grow, adding new bloggers and unique viewers each month. Women’s/lifestyle network BlogHer, home improvement destination Haven Home Media, and Christian network Beacon Ads have all found a position in the game, and are all profitable and growing. With 10 million unique users, FoodBuzz adds 200 new bloggers each month. FoodBuzz discovered that 1 percent of all online searches are food-related, and that offline, food-related ad spending tops $15 billion alone, which “makes the potential online spend very significant and reinforces our choice to focus on the food vertical specifically rather than lifestyle generally,” according to a company spokesperson.

“Not only are advertisers seeing better response to their ads on blogs vs. ads with other types of publishers, the quality of attention they’re getting is much better,” Blogads’ Musci adds.

NEXT: Beyond banner ads.