My friend Julien Braun just launched in France a new ad network called BlogBang . BlogBang is a marketplace for advertisers, “creatives” and publishers (bloggers).
An advertiser submits a creative brief, “creatives” (consumers, agencies, etc) generate their own commercial (mostly video), which show on the publisher’s blog. Example here or here. Publishers/bloggers can pick ads that might work well based on their editorial content. An optimization system (I am not sure how it works, but I think something like advertising.com) determines over time which ads work better for each blog.
The interesting part is that creatives and publishers split the revenues (with the ad agency of course). And anyone can be a creative and try to compete with the professional agencies to create the most efficient ads. As opposed to traditional creative contests, which are judged on their creative qualities, the best ads here are those that perform better. So, consumers who understand how to create ads that would perform well with a particular audience, on a particular blog, etc, can get a share of the action and help publishers make more money with ads that perform better.
Julien’s philosophy is that each media has its own advertising format (30 seconds for TV etc) but that social media has not found yet a format that works well. By letting users create their own ads, advertising becomes social and, while serving the advertiser’s brief, has a human voice.
I feel that there is something very interesting there. At least because a marketplace is a way to make “consumer-generated advertising” more scalable. But since I myself am not an expert, I am curious to hear what my favorites CGM bloggers like Pete , Max , David, Joseph and the other guys from Crayon or elsewhere think about it.
Julien previously worked at Publicis who took 60% of BlogBang. After the acquisition of Digitas, Publicis shows real ambitions to innovate in online advertising.
If you speak French, you can hear Julien’s interview by French blogging celebrity Loic Le Meur.
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