Two little houskeeping things about the UK BlogAds Network.

1) We appear to be getting some specific ads aimed directly at the UK market. Great, that was always the purpose of the thing. By offering advertisers an easy way to pick out those blogs aimed at a UK audience I’d hoped that this would in fact attract advertisers  who wanted to aim at a specifically UK audience. Well, duh, I know.

Anyway, if you look down my right sidebar to slot 7 (it’ll move up several slots over the course of next week as other ads disappear) there’s one graphic of the London Tube Map. I’m not sure if this is absolutely correct but I think that’s the first one I’ve seen from a UK advertiser aimed directly at UK consumers.

Great, it’s working!

2) I’ve just had an email from Henry Copeland at BlogAds (as will, I expect, all other BlogAds people) about the latest ad buy. NBC just made a single purchase to run on 800 blogs this coming week. That’s more ads than they sold in the whole of 2003. Big corporate ad buys like this can only mean more money coming into blogging. Whether you think that’s a good or a bad thing is entirely up to you of course. But those of us looking for the odd bit of beer money can only cheer (I’m unconvinced that UK traffic numbers will ever really provide much more than that).

Currently the UK network offers something like 400,000 page views a week for $400. Roughly. Lower prices for longer buys, of course.

So, two things. If you are already showing BlogAds but are not part of the UK network can you let me know so I can add you? Doesn’t make any difference to your pricing or margins or anything else. It just flags you up as being part of the group and thus makes it easier (and thus more likely to be bought) for those who do want to identify blogs with largely UK readerships.

Secondly, if you’re not a member of BlogAds and would like to be I have some invites available. You should be getting over 4,000 pageviews a week to join. You set the price of your ads, accept or reject each ad and in general command your own destiny. You deal directly with them, not via me. Money isn’t great but there is some there. $10 or $15 a week per ad is about right unless you’ve got high (over 5,000 a day sort of levels) traffic. As I say above, beer money rather than a living.

So, big companies starting to buy BlogAds in large campaigns and we’re beginning to see specifically UK based advertisers as well. If you want to join in, let me know.