Ads As Media

One thing Google and other search engines have done is to provide advertisers, that is, companies seeking to entertain/inform their client/audience, with a medium for the dissemination of their own media. The current media of choice are the blog and the article.

I come from an article publishing background where it's common for businesses to create articles and publish them to ezine and website audiences seeking information or advice.

I have a separate blog that focuses solely on this practice: the Article Marketing blog. (actually right now it's focused on article directories and submitting them to take advantage of the fact that these directories provide back links to the advertiser's site, thus increasing their standings in the search engines).

Advertiser articles and blogs are challenging, because again there may be a conflict of interest between the advertiser and the audience... the advertiser may not reveal the whole truth in the interest of protecting a resource avenue. It's my belief that the true value of a company is not in the product but the thought behind their process, their integrity, and their desire to truly provide value to their client/audience.