Techmeme's Sponsorship Model

Gabe Rivera has unveiled a sponsorship model for Techmeme that he's been talking about for some time. He and I talked about it months ago.

[from Notes on Techmeme's new sponsorship model - blog.memeorandum.com]

There's a new area on the right side of Techmeme labelled "Techmeme Sponsor Posts". It shows the latest blog posts from three companies who have chosen to sponsor Techmeme for the next 30 days.

This is the first sponsored material of any kind on Techmeme. Though the usual ad options have been available from the beginning, I wanted to introduce something new and fitting for kind of sites I run.

I think the model introduced here is great for Techmeme. First, readers are presented with posts from companies who understand Techmeme's place online and want to engage its readers. It's great for the sponsors basically for the same reason: sponsored posts are a natural extension to the mix of news that keeps Techmeme's readers paying attention. And it definitely serves the future viability of Techmeme, which can't live indefinitely on my personal savings!

The fees look reasonable too:

[from Sponsor Techmeme page]

Pricing: First, second, and third slots are $4,500, $3,500, and $3,000 per month respectively, with a one month minimum term. CPM equivalents are low: in the $5-8 range. A monthlong Techmeme sponsorship will have far greater influence on the right people than your typical industry conference, and at a fraction of the price.

I guess it's fair to compare with conferences, but might be more sensible to compare with ads at Techcrunch or the like. Still, I agree that it is both an attractive place to advertise, and that this represents what may turn out to be the first viable form of social advertising.

tags: gabe+rivera, social+advertising, techmeme, marketing

Comments

[Tom Raftery]

I think Gabe is absolutely spot on with this model - I clicked on several of the stories on his sponsored section today because they were stories, not ads and therefore they were interesting. The story about the new version of Socialtext was especially interesting and I hadn't spotted it elsewhere.