Federated Media signs Rocketboom, others

Lost Remote was in the first handful of sites to sign with Federated Media about a year ago, and now dozens and dozens of sites have joined the blog ad network. FM announced this last week that Rocketboom and Ask a Ninja are among the new members, and it has signed a long term extension with Digg. (There’s been plenty of discussion about the Ask a Ninja deal and whether FM guaranteed the authors $300,000 in revenue this year.) FM says it has grown to 365 million monthly pageviews with advertisers like Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Nissan and Nike. So why it such a big success? In part because FM is focusing on quality advertisers and quality blogs, and its contract is easy to swallow (no ownership). PaidContent, though, has not signed with FM and continues to be very successful doing its own direct selling with more niche technology clients, with likely higher returns. Whatever the model, it’s clear that there’s money in blogging, at least for those that have built an audience.