Advertising on Blogs amounts to Peanuts?

Could it be true that the total amount of advertising on all blogs only totaled $20 million in 2005?

To me this seems like a large error in estimating the total advertising revenues accruing to blogs. The top 100 blogs alone probably made more than this total combined in 2005?

But according to a recent analysis by PQ Media, the total ad spending on blogs, podcasts and web feeds was only $20.4 million in 2005. This is a really piddly little number compared to total online advertising of $12.5 billion in 2005.

They see this number growing 30-fold by 2010. They forecast that by 2010 advertisers will spend at least $757 million to place ads on blogs, podcasts and web feeds.

See the summary at Red Herring.

The photo above is by Shizhao.

The biggest marketing blunder of the year?

Today Google's main page featured an artist I've never heard of. His art was honored in their logo for the day.

His name is Joan Miro and he died twenty-three years ago. But his family estate acted quickly and said something akin to... 'Google, take us off your main page right now!

The Google search engine gets about 91 million page views a day. As we all know, Google does not advertise on their main search page. But every so often, they do some fun things with their logo. On holidays, they add holiday flair. And very rarely, they honor someone who's made a huge contribution to humanity.

Today they did that for Joan Miro. And Miro's family essentially said 'Stop! You've got no right to do this!'

So Google pulled the altered logo off their page in mid-day.

Can you imagine being given 91 million free page impressions on Google's front page to get world-wide attention and to raise global awareness about your cause or masterpieces?

How much would that cost realistically?

Could this possibly be the world's largest marketing blunder?

VoIP's Top Daily Insights

If you need to stay on top of developments in the VoIP industry you'll want to check out a very interesting resource at Etheral Voices.

Etheral Voices tracks the daily news and insights on twenty VoIP companies. It's unique from other 'breaking news' sites in the sense that it encompasses not just news and company releases, but more importantly, it tracks the fresh insights people are blogging about related to these companies.

For competitive intelligence around VoIP this is probably the best resource out there particularly if you are interested in the following companies;

Alcatel
Atreus Systems
Avaya
Azulstar Networks
BorderWare
BroadSoft
Digium
Empirix
Foundry Networks
Kayote Networks
Linksys
M5 Networks
Motorola
Pandora Networks
Patton Electronics
Popular Technology
Sangoma Technologies
Siemens
Sonus Networks
Stealth Communications
Sylantro Systems
Telchemy

Check out how useful it may be to you; go to the EV site and try a search on the VoIP term that interests you.

Sangoma: A VoIP company to watch in 2006?

VoIP Magazine provided a great summary of the top twenty VoIP companies to watch in 2006 a couple of months ago.

This list highlights the vendors that are best positioned to spearhead advances in the enterprise or service provider marketplace over the coming year.

This list contains my personal pick for VoIP in the sense of outperforming the VoIP stock market selection as a whole in 2006. It's also the only company in the VoIP sector in which I own shares. That would be Sangoma Technologies Corporation.


See more about Sangoma, Digium and Asterisk here.

See a recent interview (March, 2006) with Sangoma's CEO at Real-Time Voip.