As many of you will know (and for those who don’t there’s something of a reminder in that little badge up at the top left corner of the blog) I’m part of the PayPerPost team of bloggers. There’s some thousands out there now (and no, I don’t know how many thousand) taking money from advertisers to place sponsored blog posts upon their blogs.

This all raises something of a question of blog ethics (if that’s not too pretentious a term to use when describing millions scribbling and communicating) as there are those who think that there should be a purity to the medium, something and somewhere that is unsullied by commercialism.

As you’ll see when looking around here, those posts that get paid for are clearly marked as such and as I’m not getting any complaints from anyone that seems to be enough. Certainly, I can’t believe that anyone complains about my paying my mortgage this way while I also bring a great deal of unsponsored material (I’m aware that there are those who complain about the quality of the unsponsored material, but it’s not that it’s either sponsored or unsponsored that is the complaint) for your delectation or derision.

But there’s a larger question of blog ethics as well, over and above what you and I think of it. Is this idea of advertising on blogs inoffensive enough to the vast majority, that it will continue to grow?

It would appear that at least some people think so, yes, as PPP has just raised it’s second round of VC financing, getting $ 7 million from a group led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson (the full press release is below the fold).

The question now is what should they spend this money on? My vote is more for me of course, as I’ve still got another storey to put on this house before I’m finished.

Disclosure Policy.

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored

Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace
for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators,
today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment
led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A
and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms.
The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost
to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for
further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated
Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include
existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as
new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director
Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has
established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief
executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of
our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks
significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI
metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We
intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and
professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network
of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than
6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled
Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts
discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos
or other media. The content creators are required to disclose
relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency
for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of
blogs, have already earned money for their creators through
PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released
PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to
contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify
through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim
Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It
continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the
advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored
search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive
potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving
paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a
new website detailing the company’s service offering at
http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up
at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.