Beyond pop-ups and display ads, companies have come to value the worth of spreading a message through contextual advertising on popular blogs. Established lifestyle blogs or ‘Mummy Blogs' offer the chance for products and services to be advertised through posts in the coffee-morning, nibble-and-natter culture that has come to grip the blogosphere. A recommendation from a trusted and familiar blogger can in some cases carry as much weight as one found in the supplements of a weekend newspaper Savvy marketers are eager to get in on the act of working with these bloggers, plugging their products through native articles with authentic voices.
Marketers are not only attracted to these bloggers because they are the most prolific, but also due to the fact they happen to be the target audience. It is the women who are these days commonly regarded as the decision-makers: what meals are to be eaten at home, where to go on holiday, which brands to cloth the children in.
With companies such as 1&1 offering web hosting services and a quick and easy ways to build a site, more and more people are attempting to cash in on the chances to make some money through establishing a top blog. Naturally, the mass of sites means that there are a lot of below par domains out there. Simply setting up a domain and posting the odd picture on Instagram is not going to see the advertisers roll in. What will however is providing a top-quality articles and regularly updated content.
Slipping into news feeds
For broad and immediate exposure, marketing departments are turning to social media. Calvin Klein are currently experiencing a self-professed ‘viral moment' after having asked their customers to post pictures of themselves in their underwear with the tag line #mycalvins. In a moment of opportunistic brilliance,brands jumped upon the ‘TwitStorm' after Luis Suarez bit an Italian opponent in the Fifa World Cup last summer; successfully elbowing their way into the global banter. As opposed to blasting potential customers with invasive pop-up videos and banners, big companies are attempting to level with their target demographic, using the channels that their potential customers trust and frequent to flog their wares.
For now at least, it is proving remarkably successful.
