There has been much chatter about ads on blogs lately.

Steve Hodson:

While ad networks rely on the page view count in order to decide whether they want to do business with you there is never any value placed on the fact that you might only have a 1,000 visitors that come by everyday to read what you are writing. Just as they won’t taking into account that you have a few thousand RSS readers who faithfully pull your feed everyday to read what you write.

Here is Sramana Mitra:

The networks, I am afraid, have a LOT to learn. At this point, they are pretty clueless about how to use their chips, including traffic, brand, and ad sales forces. They don’t really understand how to use links, they don’t know how to sell high CPM ads, and they don’t know how to converse with the blogosphere effectively.

It's really not about ads on blogs but rather online advertising in general. Back in December 2005 I issued this challenge:

Innovative Sponsors Needed

When it comes to advertising, I'd rather work with companies that would like to be innovative, try different things, and I've got a ton of ideas and challenges if that sort of thing appeals to you.

For example, let's turn the space occupied by a banner advert into something different, something useful. I don't know what that might be yet, but I have some ideas, and you have some too--that's where the innovation comes into play.

Are you feeling innovative? Call me, my cell is 415 336 7547.

It's taken a while for me to find an innovative sponsor. Intel has come to the forefront, which is great. I hand coded a demonstration media widget for Intel (it is on the right) and worked with Ken Kaplan over at Intel on this project. He likes this approach and I like it too.

The media widget is different from regular ads because we filter out banner ads, skyscraper ads, etc all the time. We have an in-built ad-blocker in our heads.

The media widget is different because done right, its content can change all the time. It is informative rather than a marketing slogan. It can be RSS enabled for quick updates, and it can be set up to showcase the latest news, blog posts, podcasts, vidcasts from a company. It can also be made shareable, and can be embedded in any web page.

The Intel media widget is a hand-coded demo for now. Newsgator has offered its technology to take it to the next level.

Are you innovative?

I'm looking for four other sponsors for SVW that are innovative companies and would like their new/social media showcased on Silicon Valley Watcher within a media widget..

I have space for only one PR company to use the media widget to showcase their new media practice and also their clients.

Are you feeling innovative?

Call me on my cell 415 336 7547. Or email tom(at)siliconvalleywatcher.com.