Thalasar Ventures

First off this is NOT a paid post. Just thought I would clear the air there. It’s apparent a number of bloggers are underwhelmed by the recent foray of PPP into ReviewMe’s space. Kumiko ssays you will make less money and John Chow says that PPP Direct “fails”. Both are flat assed wrong here. It’s curtains for ReviewMe.

Both Kumiko and John cite the lack of the advertiser marketplace as a problem. That’s of course strange because PPP has a marketplace. Its the PPP marketplace. I as a blogger don’t particularly like perusing a marketplace and then putting in some low assed bid only to get rejected by the advertiser. Furthermore it’s not apparent that ReviewMe is getting the tier one advertisers. Many of the reviewed posts at John Chow’s blog are for moderately spammy SEO purposes and it’s pretty apparent that’s the case. For ReviewMe’s 50% fee I don’t hear about ad reps hitting up tier one advertisers. People seem to forget a couple of things. ReviewMe isn’t VC funded like PayPerPost is. This means Pay Per Post can build a realistic pricing structure into it’s marketplace. Paying for a post is more analogous to a media buy than anything else. If you were to tell someone in a major agency that your media buy is gonna run 50% to the broker and 50% to the publication, you would get laughed out the office.

The “lack of the marketplace” isn’t meaningful. If this part of internet media is going to grow up, it needs to conform to the standards that advertising agencies (which hold the gateway for real money). People just don’t understand that the way PPP is executing, they will be the people that major media go to for a campaign. The business model is about the advertisers and I am pretty sure the PPP guys can build a simple directory. Let’s face it if you think the ReviewMe directory of blogs is a competitive advantage, you have got another thing coming. Simply put I am willing to bet that directory generates ZERO leads for its bloggers. I don’t troll the Review Me publisher listings because I am unwilling to do anything below $100 per post. The Review Me “marketplace” exterts a downward pressure on the price of posts since I am competing with every single blog out there willing to do a post for $20. I place too much value on my blog to do that.

PPP’s plan is too build a marketplace that is palatable to Fortune 500 advertisers. Has ReviewMe run any major media campaigns like the that PPP did for Bug? Nope. It’s mostly small net savvy business trying to get an audience or backlinks and that’s it. ReviewMe will not grow beyond what it is RIGHT NOW. They don’t have a direct sales force out there working with large interactive agencies like PPP does. It’s about the relationships alright but it’s the relationships with the big money advertisers. That’s the key difference and quite frankly since PPP had the good sense to get VC, it’s a strategy they can execute on.

ReviewMe will continue to putter along but it won’t be anything more than what it is right now. PPP and PPP Direct is gonna roll up big media advertisers looking for guidance in this marketplace.