How Federated Media is Pushing The Conversation To Potentially Create Innovation

Stefanie Olsen at CNET has an interview with Federated Media’s (FM) John Battelle today. In the interview Battelle speaks about ad networks, how FM works, funding, and the future for FM. It’s well worth a read along with Battelle’s discussion about ad networks. There’s an interesting discussion of the interview on SAI.

We’ve written about FM a variety of times including their funding announcement last summer. In the post about the funding, we asked if they were having trouble filling their client’s inventory as "Zwinky" and "Free iPod" banners aren’t paying the rates listed on FM’s Web site. I still see many default ads across the FM network today.

I applied to join FM about a year ago and was declined due to traffic. Since then I have attempted to apply two other times and have received no feedback on either application. In some ways, it’s great to watch what FM is doing from the sidelines. 

For the majority of us, when we start a blog or Web site, we begin with Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network and move through the ad network ranks over time. For many the goal is to sell advertising directly as every ad network will take a cut. The best scenario is to sell your own and have an ad network backfill the unsold inventory.

What I like about FM is that they appear to understand blogs and have also been able to sign some major clients including Toshiba, Sun, Microsoft, etc. I am quite sure that in the 12 years I’ve been with Burst Media they haven’t been able to sign as many top technology companies as FM has in their short lifetime.

FM has pushed the envelope several times with their "conversational marketing" programs. Each time a blog shitstorm is created but at the end of the day, new advertising conversations have started because of the envelope being pushed. I haven’t always agreed with what they have tried but they are open to discussion which is a good thing. Check out my initial review of Webb Alert for an example.

I’ve stressed to both Burst Media and Tribal Fusion that they need to move past 1998 or they will be pushed aside by FM and others like them. The ad networks we are seeing today understand social media, blogs and are innovating in the ad network space. Brands want to connect to social media and are looking for more than just a traditional banner ad buy. Even something as simple as selling 125 pixel squares is missing on the majority of ad networks.

On a side note, Battelle’s Conversational Marketing Summit is coming to NYC as part of Internet Week in June. I have expressed interest to FM either as a speaker/panelist or as a media attendee.