Yahoo Has a Big Future in Tagvertising

Two new sites have opened up in an effort to court advertisers to sponsor tags (the latter is down as of this writing). Both, I am sorry to say, are indicative of the bit of froth that is filling the Web 2.0 space. They won't fly because they don't have the fervent user community that marketers covet. Yahoo, however, does and I think we're going to see them make tagvertising an entirely new revenue line.

Those of you who have been around here for awhile know that I am bullish over the potential of advertising on tags - or what I call Tagvertising. I believe this year it's going to become a killer marketing vehicle. As Yahoo and others take tag sites more mainstream, advertisers will flock to sponsor certain tags because it is a highly targeted buy. It's very similar in certain ways to Google Adwords.

The media players that stand to gain are Yahoo and Technorati. In the near future I bet we will see Yahoo start to slowly and carefully integrate their contextual search marketing ads right into their newly purchased fraternal tag twins - i.e. Flickr and del.icio.us. Don't be surprised to see them stick contextual ads in these sites' RSS feeds as well. And if the rumors are true that Technorati is selling out to Yahoo, then I think we're looking at something extraordinary indeed with perhaps a revenue share for bloggers. Keep an eye on what Yahoo does with its latest buys and on Tagvertising overall.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, del.icio.us, Flickr, Tagging, Tags, Tagvertising, Yahoo

Comments

[Joel]

What captures me are the two ideas that companies will sponsor tags and bloggers gaining from this revenue. This would result in blogging on certain subjects being more profitable than others. An interesting thought that could (I think) increase the overall quality of blogged content and further push away the conventional media. So I'd start blogging about those profitable subjects now to build up a readership for when the bucks start flowing in!

[RBA]

Interesting timing Steve.

The entire blogosphere is talking about 1000tags.com, which seems to be getting a lot of attention, and you come with a site (tagsponsor?) that from what I see is dead empty and has clearly come up after seeing what 1000tags.com just launched.

The domain 1000tags.com was registered on November of last year, and launched on January 9th or 10th, while tagsponsor.com was registered just yesterday.

M.A. got his share of complaints for talking about 1000tags, but you're actually "advertising" a very sad copycat without mention to the site that seems it got all this tag-ad madness started.

I'm dissapointed.

[Niall Kennedy]

The TechCrunch story you linked to was a suggestion, and TechCrunch was not saying the event was or was not taking place.

I'd love for Auto Company X to buy Toyota for better hybrid technologies, but that doesn't necessarily mean Auto Company X is purchasing Toyota.

[Will O'Hara]

Hi, i'm Will O'Hara and I run TagSponsor.com.

I've been fending off the copycat label for most of the day. If i may i'd like to put across my side of the story?

I had the idea for the site in early december, I began to design a site and chose a name. Unfortunately, it fell by the wayside as other plans took priority. Then, as I was checking the tech news the other day, I noticed the 1000tags story and realised that if i didn't put the site live now, all the work i'd put into the site would have been wasted. I registered the domain name, hurridly finished the site and put the it live late last night.

Having been forced to show my hand, i'm not as organised as i'd like to have been. However, i've had good feedback today and have taken a few orders.

The two sites do have many similarities, however they also have many differences. I doubt that any copycat sites will end up looking as professional as TagSponsor.com does, the site took time to build and i'm offended by comments that claim the opposite.

On a side note, it appears that the owner of 1000tags has been emailing some of the people who've sponsored a tag on my site informing them that they've been conned by a copycat and should advertise on their site instead. This is neither professional or polite.

Thanks for your time,

Will O'Hara

[Seth]

Tagvertising.com is for sale. visit the site for details.

[Pete Cashmore]

Steve,

Big mistake here - theadcloud is *not* a sponsored tag site - it is a free classified listings site that happens to use tags to organize the listings. Review here:

TheAdCloud - Classifieds with Tagging

If you are looking for another sponsored tag site, you might want to include 1000tags, but to be honest most of these are just gimmicky attempts to replicate the success of milliondollarhomepage. While sites which use tagging already may experiment with sponsored tags, these milliondollarhomepage wannabes don't really count - there's no value to the user in viewing a page of ads with no content.

[Rich]

Tagvertising already exists. Yahoo! Search Marketing ads run on Technorati. These are standard search ads, not contextual ads. More details here: a del.icio.us hack + tagvertising.

[Foggy]

Anyone heard of this site?
http://www.onethousandmodels.com
There are so many copycats out there now.