By Staff Writer – John Federico (@gadgetboy)

We’ve seen many schemes to monetize content within blogs and social media. Everything from affiliate programs to Google AdSense to sponsored blog posts and even sponsored tweets.

TalkAhead has a new twist on sponsorships for your blog and it looks promising – Sponsored Comments.


I first encountered the company while at adtech New York this past November and was immediately intrigued – the concept is so simple, it’s brilliant.

1. Both Publishers and Advertisers join the TalkAhead network
2. Using keywords and probably some sort of semantic magic, advertisers can find blog posts that are relevant to their product or service
3. Advertisers can contribute to the comment stream but their comments are clearly marked “Sponsored Comment”

For publishers, implementation is as simple as adding a code snippet in the appropriate place in your site template.

The system provides real-time transaction reporting, multiple billing models (CPM, flat rate or auction) and the ability to pre-approve a sponsored comment.

For advertisers, monitoring the content pool was easy but just became easier: yesterday, TalkAhead announced TalkAhead Alerts. Similar to Google Alerts, advertisers receive messages as soon as a matching keyword or topic appears in the TalkAhead network.

Once an advertiser finds appropriate content, they enter a comment that’s up to 500 characters in length along with a link. They can then set a budget and an expiration date for the comment, similar to Google AdWords/AdSense.

I like this model for a few reasons.

• It’s not a sponsored post, so the publisher’s integrity or intentions are never questioned.
• Unlike AdSense, there’s no obvious incentive to write content only for it’s keyword value as the market is driven by participation, not ad inventory.
• Finally, it’s clearly labeled as a sponsored comment, taking the responsibility of FTC disclosures away from the publisher.

Does it work?

I’m going to sign up as a publisher and an advertier and report back. Stay tuned.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Tags: advertising , affiliate programs , Blogging , Blogs , Google AdSense , Monetizing Content , Sponsored Blog Posts , sponsored comments , Sponsored Tweets , Sponsorships , TalkAhead