Summary,
It was an interesting task. I am disappointed with some technical limitations regarding this assigment, as it made it a little bit more difficult than it should be and less fun than it could be.
I think blogs have a great future even if I am not so much a blog writer. Reading blogs and analysing the advertising bit was very informative and interesting. For sure it gave me a chance to develop my own opinions on the subject, which is always rewarding.
Thank you,

Can blog ad be part of marketing strategy?
First of all statistics showed in a previous post are quite promissing for e-commerce companies. The blog is a developing and more and more popular medium and most blog readers actually shop online and indicate that they trust blogs as a valuable news source.
Because of their specifics, blog ads may offer a unique opportunity for e-commerce companies that offer niche products. This is because it is easy to find a relevant blog to advertise with. Successful blogs develop an extremely loyal user base and audience. Online marketers who sell niche products should look to test this medium as a way to hit their elusive target audience.
Furthermore, blogs offer unique challenges in the areas of branding and control. Many of blog ad networks have little control over the content on pages where ads are displayed. While the larger players, such as Google and BlogAds, claim to have sophisticated technology that scans the content of blogs to ensure their quality.
However even if this online ad medium may look very promissing it has still not proven to be an extremely effective means of efficiently acquiring customers. On a cost per click basis it is difficult to manage this form of advertising to a target cost per acquisition. Companys may still use up their budgets in a more controlled ways auch as search, affiliate, media buys, and email marketing. Currently blog advertising is still too young for most e-commerce companies to benefit (Peter Figueredo in Target Marketing Magazine). However, this could change within the next years. Therefore it is wise to monitor the blog advertising for future opportunities.
We must be aware, however, that at the same time an opposite trend develops: ad-free blogs’ claims. The groups that promote this approach develop their own argumentation and their logo:

Blog ads

Another popular way to advertise on blogs are blog ads. It is said that as much as banner ads let you reach the customer as much blog ads create salespeople.
There is a variety of companies helping to get blog ads established, like Blogads.com or Performancing Partners, or MNS and many more.
The principle is that blog people like to talk to others. Blogads for example is a network of bloggers who accept advertising. Advertisers order, manage and renew fixed-period ads or sponsorships on a choosen blog. Only ads that blog owner approves run.
According to a recent survey by over 17,000 blog readers (conducted by BlogAds http://www.blogads.com/survey/blog_reader_survey.html) , 61% of readers are over 30 and 75% earn more than $45,000 a year. A surprising 66.7% of blog readers have clicked on a blogad in the past. This study helps draw a picture of blog readers that may be very different from what we would think.

How it is advertised ?

Going through the blog pages it is easy to notice the huge amount of blogs that get established by people of different profile. Majority are teenagers, poets/artists/journalists, politicians, etc. These blogs are also quite frequently read by internauts. No wonder therefore that many companies want to attach ads to these pages to get some attention of the readers.
A great majority of blogs are non-commercial but full-time bloggers try to find a way to make a profit from their work.
Apparently the most common method is to accept the so called banner advertising.
I am not very good at internet language so I have checked in Wikipedia again and now I know that this form of online advertising means to embed an advertisement into a web page and a direct link will bring the readers to the web side of the advertiser. These images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape, which means they are either wide and short, or tall and narrow, that is why they are reffered to as banners. These are indeed extremelly popular within Polish blogs.
However, some bloggers dont like to use this because of negative reader response to the ads. The other option is to promote merchandise from other sites. The bloggers receive a commission any time when a reader/customer buys the item after following a blog link.

Polish and foreign blogs

There are big differences between Polish and foreign blogs. To start with the services that offer set ups of blogs. When you look at the most famous webpages:
Blogsome
Blogger
Live Journal
Typepad
Userland
Wordpress.com
Windows Live Spaces
You can notice that there are practically no ads attached to these. What gets advertised on these pages are rather “blogs” and “blogging” as such:
An example from “Live Journal”: be a part of a process that is changing global communication. Blogging is a way for individuals to publish material on the internet for everybody to read. You can do it right here, right now. BlogSome is the fastest growing blog host in the world (in percentage terms!). Sign up and start blogging.
Sometimes you can find some ads on blogging seminars, or best posts or tips for blogs.
Much different are the Polish Blog webpages. As an example:
blog.interia.pl
blog.onet.pl
Blog.pl
Blog4u.pl
Blox
Eblog.pl
Jabba (blog oparty o Jabbera)
mBlog.pl Most of the pages contain ads (including political ones – local elections are scheduled for 12 November). The only exeptions are Blox and eBlog.

Blog advertising

I have gone through all the blogs and class materials and it took me a while to understand what can be the topic for my discussion on our forum.
I would like to spend some time understanding how such media as blogs are used to advertise.
Ads are part of our life. They influence our imagination and sculpture way we see the world. Following the latest statistics in Poland, we see in average 80 ads on TV daily, and in total over 1000 a week. I do not know if we all realize these numbers? Behind each ad there is a business, sales figures, crowds of people.
Over the last 5 years the average rememberance of ads decreased by 20%. It is not surprising - ads are now everywhere and we are overwhelmed with the number of information we are confronted with everyday: in newspapers, on TV and radio and ... in internet.
This is again a challange to marketeers, media houses and
Reading the class materials helped me to understand better the phenomenon of the internet in respect to advertisement: success is not in being general it is rather in being specific and individual. (Long Tail).
What I would like to investigate in detail is how blogs are used to advertise. What types of advertisement are to be found around blogs and what companies and products get advertised with help of blogs.

Magda DBA Blog

Creating a blog was not as easy as I thought.