Respond Offers Publishers A New Revenue Stream

With the advent of the social web more and more publishers are adding Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and other call-to-action social buttons to their posts as a way to  help readers spread their articles across the social sphere. This has resulted in the “social bar” being a new focus of interaction and therefore a new focus of attention of readers – a perfect place for advertisers to place their branding.

Respond have embraced the opportunity of an ad space outside of the traditional banners, leaderboard and skyscrapers to which users have become increasingly blind – and have created an ad networks for the social bar. Web publishers and bloggers just need to add a short JavaScript snippet to their site templates in a similar way to adding Facebook Like or Twitter Tweet buttons, and advertiser branded button will appear contextually matched to the content of the page – So if the button was on a travel article then the link may be to Lastminute.com for example (see right).

Currently Respond has around 150 advertisers on board including a number of high-profile companies such as Nike and Casio, and EasyJet – mostly focused on the UK, but they are looking to target the US and Australia shortly.

We’re testing out the new ad unit over at TechFruit and will keep you all posted with how we get on.