So the other day I was contacted by Geoff from Word of Blog (not providing a link as I’m not givin’ em my rank… but you can find them via MSN Search!). Because of my link to Habitat for Humanity on my Unlock AudioVox 5600 post, he asked me if I wanted to post an ad in my sidebar for Habitat’s “Give us your car as a donation” campaign. When I asked him why I wouldn’t just link directly to Habitat versus going through him, he replied:
Thanks, that’s a fair question.
There are several important benefits to go through our service:
a) It enables Habitat to track clicks (if you take a look at http://www.wordofblog.net/info.php?id=364 you’ll see on the left side the list of the first few blogs which posted the badge today and how many clicks they generated so far), so that they know who their supporters and well wishers are.
b) As a related matter, it enables Habitat to exercise some control over who posts the badge — the beauty of making a badge available to the public is any blogger can pick and choose it if they want to suppor the organization, which creates a tremendous potential in terms of word of mouth campaign; however, the obvious danger is that the badges get displayed on blogs that the organization wouldn’t want to appear on. So by hosting and serving the Habitat badge, we enable Habitat to potentially take out the badge from any blog or site they don’t want to appear on.
c) Finally, because we host the badges ourselves, we can offer to the bloggers attractive user features such as badge rotation — if you want to support several organizations on your blog but don’t want to sidebar to look like a “christmas tree”, you can have several badges rotate on your page ( i.e., change each time the page is refreshed).
(emphasis mine).
So Habitat can already see who clicks on their site via referrers, and I’m sure they do. But they probably care much more about people donating them their cars. Also, say I was a less than upstanding blog… Habitat couldn’t control whether or not I put up an ad for them or not (well, they could potentially sue me, but their policy of distributing out their message may cause some problems. Regardless, it’d be a messy issue.). Which means we really come down to a rotating ad powered by Word of Blog.
At least the search engines give you a couple of bucks if you show their ads on your site.
Bah.
Erik,
To address your concerns:
1) Again, if you were a less than upstanding blog, the organization (in this case Habitat) could indeed block the badge from appearing on your blog, if it is a badge served by Word of Blog (every blog that posts a badge is openly listed on that badge’s specific page on the site, as soon as it gets at least one click). It is a crucial security feature that Word of Blog offers. If your point is to say that you could still go to the organization’s website, copy their logo and post it on your blog, then that’s certainly true, but obviously it has nothing to do with us.
2) Regarding the badge rotation, what is your concern exactly? That we’d be somehow serving badges on your blog that you haven’t chosen? If so, this couldn’t be further away from what we’re trying to do here, and I would invite you to take a better look at our site rather than relying on our perhaps poorly written email response. When you go to the site, you will see that you have absolutely no obligation whatsoever to choose the badge rotation feature (only a few of our users do), and then if you do, you get to build yourself your portfolio of badges that will appear on your page. You can change badges or remove all badges in a second. The very concept underlying Word of Blog is precisely to give publishers/bloggers full control over ads that appear on their blog!
Hope this helps!
The Word of Blog team.
Your point on (1) is absolute crap. It’s like advertising a home security system that’s a doorman at your front door who won’t give your key out to a thief. Thieves break in the back! And again, you provide no protection to Habitat from less than upstanding blogs. It’s trivial to route around you, and most people who would want to slam them will not even bother to use you.
Re: (2) — Look, if you want to say, “We’re a non-profit ad network, and we’d like to include you in our network,” then say that. It’s a fair offer, and while I’d still refuse it, it wouldn’t tick me off. But to ask me to advertise for Habitat through you when I’m already advertising for them directly doesn’t do me or Habitat any good — it just helps you. So please, don’t play this as something good for Habitat.