Welcome to Smuggle Me

Well, I must admit that I’m really tired right now and in a couple hours I’m getting on a red-eye flight with my wife and 2 children to go to Hawaii. Ok, I’m sure that no one will have sympathy for me going to Hawaii. However, I’m kind of dreading the flight. Hopefully I can sleep quite a bit.

I must also admit that I’m a little sad to be going to Hawaii now that PayPerPost announced SocialSpark. Well, Hawaii should be a lot of fun and it will be really interesting for me to present at the EMR conference I’m going to attend. Hopefully I can get on in the evenings when the kids are asleep.

Update: TechCrunch finally put up their coverage of SocialSpark. Pretty weak coverage since Mike didn’t cover much of the announcement at all. Maybe he was busy since it’s the weekend.

I’m currently sitting at PayPerPost/Izea’s user conference called PostieCon. In 30 minutes we’ll be seeing the unveiling of Argus to the world. I’ve previously blogged about how Izea is planning to take on Google. We officially know that Argus is now called SocialSpark. I’ll place a screenshot of the new site at the bottom of this post.

I think the most groundbreaking feature they are announcing with SocialSpark is allowing advertisers to sponsor blogs.

In addition to sponsored posts, SocialSpark has created a viable alternative to traditional online display ads designed to provide a higher return on investment for both advertisers and bloggers. The revolutionary new form of advertising allows marketers to set a price range they are willing to pay to sponsor a blog via an interactive ad unit called a Blog Welcome™. The new unit welcomes a user when they visit a blog and then collapses into a small persistent sponsorship bar that remains at the bottom of a browser.

I’m not so sure about having a permanent bar at the bottom of a blog, but I guess I don’t see any reason why it’s a bad idea. I think I’ll have to see the full implementation before I make final judgment. Plus, I think it’s important to know how much that’s worth. Can you have multiple advertisers? Does the toolbar have a set price for a certain time frame? I think we’ll find out when Ted shows it in a few minutes.

As expected, Izea is going to have a whole group of stats.

Analytics tools installed on a blogger’s blog allow SocialSpark to provide traffic data on the blog’s public profile. Advertisers are provided with a complete picture of a blog’s influence including visits and page views, along with other demographic information such as aggregate gender, age, location, interest and other visitor information. That data allows advertisers to build their street teams based on the audience of the blogger. Once a campaign is launched, advertisers can monitor CPC and CPM as well as gauge brand awareness and campaign impact across the blogosphere.

Looks like SocialSpark should be pretty interesting. They are also unveiling a blogger’s social network. It doesn’t look that interesting to me. Although one feature I know about does look interesting. It’s essentially a way to manage your blog roll using PayPerPost SocialSpark. For advertisers the idea of creating your own niche social network of bloggers is a pretty unique way for advertisers to find their target market.

Another important part of this announcement is required in post disclosure. A great step forward.

30 minutes and we’ll be able to see it in action and I’ll be able to tell you more about what I think of SocialSpark.