Montreal Tech Watch

Transcontinental Media launches ad network for bloggers

By Heri Sep 17th 2007 in entrepreneurship, Marketing

Transcontinental Media is launching the 20th of September a local advertising network, allowing announcers to advertise on Québec-based blogs. The initiative will focus initially on a small subset of bloggers, presented as the 20 most influental blogs in Québec, and will show ads from high-end announcers and from its subsidiary Les Affaires.

The initiative is organized by Guillaume Brunet, although Michel Leblanc presents himself as the father of the idea.

This is a direct result from Yulbiz, a local event started by Michel Leblanc and Philippe Martin, where business bloggers meetup and discuss about their web projects and business issues. Since attendees were also heading communication agencies and media groups, I see this as a natural outcome of Yulbiz, and a proof of the group’s dynamism and success. It is noteworthy that they have also published a book lately on the topic of blogging.

Here is the list of the blogs participating:

I like the fact that it’s local, which means ads are highly relevant to any Montreal Tech Watch reader. Products like Google AdSense are inadequate for bloggers as they were designed mostly for high-trafficked websites. Blogs on the other hand don’t have as much readership, but they are highly focused and influential, which calls for specialized ad networks like this. Transcontinetal Media also want to increase overall readership of the blog network, which left me wondering what they are preparing for the future.

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Comments

  • Mat September 17, 2007

    Achilles Heel: RSS

  • Jevon September 17, 2007

    This is fantastic. You are right on that being local is what matters.

    Hopefully TC will do this in other locals.

  • Heri September 17, 2007

    Mat: you are right, people who read blogs via RSS won’t see any ad. but anyway, we are far away from full monetization. i expect revenues from this to pay hosting, that’s all.

    Jevon: they are testing it for 2 months, i am quite sure it will succeed. and in this case, it will be extended to other places.

  • Mat September 17, 2007

    Will you/they be monitoring click-through and conversion rates?

  • Heri September 17, 2007

    they have installed their own ad server and will manage ad sales. it’s just a javascript line, the image will show the current announcer.

    i find it great because it’s non-exclusive, and i don’t have to manage it.

    i might make another followup after the 2 months to see if it’s really good

  • Mat September 17, 2007

    but independent from ad sales, are they performing any analytics on how successful the ad campaigns are? do you know?

  • blognation Canada » Blog Archive » Transcontinental Shows the Power of Local Advertising-Ads for Quebec Blogs September 17, 2007

    [...] Thanks to Sam I got his tip about Transcontinental Media starting a locally-focused ad network for Quebec-based blogs and websites.  Initially targeted at a select few websites and launching September 20, this bold initiative shows how powerful the local ad market could become.  Sure we as bloggers like high paying ads from larger extra-local advertisers, but if you have a large local following (like Montreal Tech Watch), then it makes sense to have local ads as well.  Unfortunately it’s hard to find and get those local ads through "traditional channels".  Heri from Montreal Tech Watch (who is included, rightly so, in the first group of Quebec blogs) hits the nail on the head with this comment: I like the fact that it’s local, which means ads are highly relevant to any Montreal Tech Watch reader. Products like Google AdSense are inadequate for bloggers as they were designed mostly for high-trafficked websites. Blogs on the other hand don’t have as much readership, but they are highly focused and influential, which calls for specialized ad networks like this. Transcontinetal Media also want to increase overall readership of the blog network, which left me wondering what they are preparing for the future. Source: Transcontinental Media launches ad network for bloggers | Montreal Tech Watch [...]

  • Heri September 17, 2007

    hey mat, when you chose an ad server, it will normally handle by itself the analytics (click through rates, geographic destinatations, impressions, sales, …)

    if you are really interested how it works, check out http://www.openads.org/

    it’s an open source ad server done in php. all you have to do afterwards is convince a few announcers to show their ad, get a few bloggers, and you are all set

  • Mat September 17, 2007

    thanks for the link heri.

    from what i read, openads is nice to get ads onto your site, but does not seem very rich when it comes to tracking their actual effectiveness.

  • Les 20 — Michael Carpentier September 17, 2007

    [...] Montreal Tech Watch fait la liste des 20 blogueurs d’affaires sélectionnés par Transcontinental pour la mise à l’essai d’une régie publicitaire en ligne. [...]

  • Geoffroi Garon September 18, 2007

    Bonjour, peux tu changer “Biotope” et mettre
    Geoffroi Garon, Stratégie d’affaires et communauté Web
    et changer l’url pour http://blogue.biotope.ca
    merci :-)

  • Heri September 18, 2007

    hey mat, openads is free and cover most of all needs when it comes to web advertising. considering the options it gives, it gives its manager more data and work that you can crunch on in a day

    Geoffroi: c’est fait, mais c’aurait été plus simple si tu rediriges automatiquement tes lecteurs de biotope.ca/blog a blogue.biotope.ca

  • Geoffroi Garon September 18, 2007

    Oui effectivement, je viens de le régler ! :-) merci

  • Guillaume Brunet September 18, 2007

    Heri, thanks for this post but you forget my blog (www.guillaumebrunet.com), the one of the AMM-PCM (www.bloguemarketinginteractif.com) and the one of my colleague (cguy.org).

    Thanks again to join this nice project.

    GB

  • Heri September 19, 2007

    I updated the list but we have now more than 20 bloggers (!!!)

  • Philippe Martin September 22, 2007

    Sans oublier votre modeste serviteur qui a contribué à ce projet :-)

  • Heri September 22, 2007

    je viens de mettre a jour la liste. je pense que n’ayez pas peur était dans la liste au début mais ca a été remplacé ensuite par inadvertance par celui de guillaume brunet

  • Patrick September 26, 2007

    Some of those blogs are new and super small, very wide range of trafic in the list. Paying for advertising on a number of them seems pointless to me.

    Interesting initiative though.

  • Heri September 27, 2007

    Patrick: but that’s the beauty of it. this is not Radio-Canada or TVA, where you try to get advertising for a top show 1 sunday night at $$$. It’s the nature of the web to distribute the content to many “voices”.

    if advertisers want lots of traffic, they will deal with canoe or tetesaclaques. but if they want something new and “web2.0″, they will try this.

  • Patrick September 28, 2007

    Sure. But I’m wondering about the validity of charging for advertising on blogs with a few tens of readers as part of a whole with some much larger blogs.

    From the way it’s presented I kind of expected it to work like Coudal’s “The Deck” i.e. everyone shows all advertising and it’s priced as a bundle. I’m not sure if this “régie” works that way though, pricing might vary by blog which would invalidate my questioning. Not much details given really.

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    [...] today BV!Max, an ad serving program for bloggers, webmasters, and web publishers in Québec. Unlike the previous initiative by Transcontinental Media, which chose an elite group of 20 A-List business …, BV!Max can be used by any website, although there are a few conditions: you have to have more than [...]

  • Transcontinental Media Launches Ads for Quebec Blogs | A View from the Isle December 18, 2007

    [...] Thanks to Sam I got his tip about Transcontinental Media starting a locally-focused ad network for Quebec-based blogs and websites.  Initially targeted at a select few websites and launching September 20, this bold initiative shows how powerful the local ad market could become.  Sure we as bloggers like high paying ads from larger extra-local advertisers, but if you have a large local following (like Montreal Tech Watch), then it makes sense to have local ads as well.  Unfortunately it’s hard to find and get those local ads through “traditional channels”.  Heri from Montreal Tech Watch (who is included, rightly so, in the first group of Quebec blogs) hits the nail on the head with this comment: I like the fact that it’s local, which means ads are highly relevant to any Montreal Tech Watch reader. Products like Google AdSense are inadequate for bloggers as they were designed mostly for high-trafficked websites. Blogs on the other hand don’t have as much readership, but they are highly focused and influential, which calls for specialized ad networks like this. Transcontinetal Media also want to increase overall readership of the blog network, which left me wondering what they are preparing for the future. Source: Transcontinental Media launches ad network for bloggers | Montreal Tech Watch [...]

  • Local business bloggers launch yulbiz.org and extends model to Europe | Montreal Tech Watch January 30, 2008

    [...] initiave sparked for instance the bloggers advertising network by Transcontinental Media, and it’s also the place where the co-founders of startup praized met. Their latest venture [...]

  • Eric Chen March 24, 2008

    The only ad network I have ever had success with was ViralyticsMedia.com. They are more of a site repping company, but if you can get in with them they are pretty solid. Customer support sucks, but they pay well.

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