Have you heard anything on Performancing’s ad program yet?

I’ve talked to the guys there and can’t quite see the value in this latest effort. I liked the exchange effort but the hover over button and sign up of blogs to capture sponsors seems like a rehash of the old style Yahoo! programs.

I haven’t particpated as much in Performancing since they went throught the last make over. I’m not finding the new setup as engaging for good dialogue (like this one) which is too bad, but I understand they have to find a way to make a buck, and at the end of the day that is what its all about.

If someone out there can put together a program that matches blog writers together with a solid business plan that is better than PPP, then people will leave PPP. The thing is, its a pretty simple business plan and easy to adopt by any blogger. They were not the first to offer this type of service. Many other companies have been doing this same thing(without even a disclosure policy requirement considered in the last 2 years) and PPP has come in, grabbed a lot of that business and taken steps to appease people like the TechCrunchers.

All in all, I’m very curious to see how this discussion evolves and even more so how these new industry and ad applications evolve. PPC didn’t happen over night and neither did PPP, PayPerPost the company as I mentioned wasn’t even the original, but neither was Microsoft nor Apple and look where that got them. You won’t catch anybody in nerds 1.0 or 2.0 accusing Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of being overly ethical, just ask Big Blue and Apple Corps.

A rebel with a cause can sometimes turn business upside down despite the controversy. I look forward to the Business 2.0 article on PPP due out.

Best Regards,
Brett

PS I write for PPP on occassion, and I write for myself on most others. I also write for Google, Yahoo, Kanoodle, Blogitive, Blogsvertise, performancing, Microsoft, Apple, and many many others. I pick my advertisers apart whenever I like, and usually when they deserve it. From my perspective it sure is a lot better than working for a fortune 500 company and getting death threats when I wouldn’t cook the books. Keeping my idealism used to be a dangerous game for me. So I keep things much simpler today. Blogs are not the solution to the worlds problems and they are not end of the world either.

In the grand scheme of things they just don’t stack up much at all. But they are fun and can be entertaining, so I don’t take it so seriously and any of my readers should not take it so seriously either.

In this modern age of advertising, a person that cannot tell the difference between signal and noise has much bigger issues than whether or not TechCrunch is pulling the wool over their eyes or whether PPP is.

For example, I am sure if your favorite car magazine tells you that BMW invited them for a weekend in Las Vegas to try out the new roadster. Yeah, they probably write it about, post some pictures but it’s more or less from a perspective that tells the reader how cool and lucky those guys are because they went to Las Vegas. No one will say, “BMW bribed us with a weekend in Las Vegas”.

(And this is just a very generic example, not saying that BMW would actually do this. ;-))

Of course it’s “good karma” to tell people when your post is strictly promotional. But it’s really not more than that. It is not like they have to be and that’s why you should not expect that.

People still have this idea about blogs and grassroot journalism, independent media and so on. But why should blogs be any different than other media?