Recent Blog Entries
Let’s talk about those “Thanks to our sponsors” entries
Written by Tyme White on July 28, 2008
I have a question and I want you to be honest. Many sites integrate a “thank you” to their sponsors, listing the sponsors and perhaps some blurb about the company, as an entry on their site. These posts most likely will remain in the archive and usually appears in the RSS feed.
My question: Do you read those entries?
Personally, I don’t read them. I asked about 15 people I see online if they read them – they don’t. I don’t read them because they have zero value to me. I’d more likely click on an ad than pay attention to the “thank you” articles. Why? Because they usually aren’t tailored to be of any benefit to the reader. They are tailored more to fulfill an obligation to the advertiser.
As a blog owner, if you do that…why? Wouldn’t it be a win/win situation if the reader paid attention to content and clicked on it? Wouldn’t that make the blog/site more appealing to seek advertising in the future? Wouldn’t that give the site/blog an edge over others?
So tell me, do you read the thank you to our sponsor entries, particularly if they appear in your feed reader?
July 28th, 2008 at 10:00 am
No, I don’t read the thank you, except for the barest skimming.
You write “…they usually aren’t tailored to be of any benefit to the reader. They are tailored more to fulfill an obligation to the advertiser.” So why not tailor it to both? If I had the need to thank a sponsor, I would turn it into post/page that matched my personal development and wisdom niche, but it wouldn’t be the landing page. That way, you end up with a win/win/win situation.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:20 am
This is timely. I just wrote one! I write them and as a reader I skim them. Sometimes it is useful to see if there any new players in the niches of the blogs I read.
I have a twist on my own ones. Instead of just listing the sponsors in the same boring way, I try to include any news or interesting things the sponsor is offering / doing. For example, one of my sponsors is a screencast publisher, so I link their most recent screencast. If a sponsor has jobs going, I’ll mention those. It makes it more interesting and useful for the reader.
They clearly do get read, since my sponsors say they love these posts and get a lot of traffic from them (though I have 16,000 subscribers who wouldn’t otherwise see the sponsorships – being entirely site based).
July 28th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Don’t read them, don’t like them. They are sponsors because they paid you to host an image/text link for whatever they are selling. What more do you owe them? I think sponsor update posts disturb the normal flow of your articles, and may irritate some readers.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
The only site where I pay attention to the sponsors is on Daring Fireball as it’s usually cool Mac software that I hadn’t heard about before. I don’t visit his site that often so the only sponsors I check out are his RSS feed sponsors, but I definitely click-through when he announces a sponsor about 80% of the time.
July 28th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
In all honesty, no, and I feel a bit dirty when I see them. I’ve got no problem with people earning money from their websites, but these “let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors” posts are simply a pain in the ass.
There’s never anything of value, and if there was, there writer would have let us know by recommending the service, not the company who bought advertising space.
July 28th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I agree with Mike — I read the RSS ads on Daring Fireball, but no where else. Daring Fireball’s RSS ads are very similar to The Deck ads (that Daring Fireball also has on their actual website) in the way that they’re ads I care about for the most part.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
In the traditional sense, I can’t recall the last time I read one. Like Lindsey said, if you’re thanking a sponsor for a banner ad, isn’t that a little much? They almost feel like it’s a pitch to other potential advertisers instead of an actual “thanks” to the current ones.
At the same time, I’ve made two such posts because it was the only way to bring on a few more sponsors for contests I held on my site. I knew I could promise X number of clicks via such a post and that was enough to bring a few extra companies on board, thus increasing the bounty I could pass along to my readers.
I made the “thanks to our sponsors” type posts because I wanted people to know that they were ads, more or less. There’s something to be said for being open about it and I didn’t want my readers to think I was covertly sticking a paid link into an otherwise legit post. It’s like those horrendous Pay Per Post ads that so many blogs participate in now. I hate not knowing if my favorite blogger is suggesting and linking to a site / service because they like it or because they’re being paid for it.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Context is everything. I find four-billion-and-one ads plastered over a blog a bit confronting. And yet it’s far more common than that which you speak of.
If the same thing happened in an RSS feed, that would be less than useful too – if I read your content, it’s because I value what you write, not who all of your sponsors are.
An occasional RSS based advertisement doesn’t worry me in the slightest – and doesn’t make me feel ‘dirty’ or ‘wrong’ in the least. If it’s a useful product, I’ll actually scope it out – I share the click-through love if warranted.
Advertising is always a polarising topic – done tastefully and with some relevance to the author or topic I see no issue with it. ‘The Deck’ ads as sported by DF and a number of smart bloggers are a great example of how it’s actually possible to advertise with flair.
July 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I loathe Daring Fireball’s RSS ads, because they are generally not clear it’s an ad until I select the title. It’s right on the edge of deceptive.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
>because they are generally not clear it’s an ad until I select the title
No offence, but they exist so you can read the full feed without being a paying DF subscriber – they’re blatantly obvious given the title itself is prefixed with “[Sponsor]“.
Don’t want them? Pay a membership fee – or visit DF directly.
As Goob puts it, being open and honest about advertising doesn’t strike me as bad.
July 30th, 2008 at 5:15 am
No, not all of DF’s posts have the [sponsor] tag, and that’s what is frustrating. I wish it were consistent. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. I don’t mind skipping over them when the [sponsor] appears, but when it doesn’t, I feel deceived thinking that the entry will be a post of some sort. Example: On 7/28 at 12:03 was a [spsonsor] about HoudahSpot. But on 7/25/08 at 1:45pm was an entry about Superbiate & Son sponsoring the feed.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:28 am
I don’t read the text fully, though I will skim through it and often click on the links to the sponsors’ sites if I think they look interesting.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:10 am
I don’t read them and I wouldn’t post one. Instead, I’d rather right a full post about one specific sponsor and why I found them useful or of value.