It seems everyone’s a blogger these days. And in between the rants of any random blogger lies your little text ad, served up by an automated network and maybe not converting too well.

Try joining Tiny Massive instead, a widget-based shopping network, designed for merchants by merchants. Tiny Massive places revolving product ads based on content relevancy. Their widgets scan the publisher pages they live on and only serve up products that match the content displayed. Tiny Massive is designed to engage users and support better buying habits too. By nature, widgets are more interactive than text or display ads, and these widgets feature ratings and user reviews directly inside the widget box.

Traditional text or display ads don’t always work for sellers and, of course, provide precious little behavioral data on prospects or customers. Tiny Massive boasts free clicks for fledgling merchants who need to grow into the PPC model - a partnership where you provide test data and gain improvement suggestions. The system is designed to learn as it goes, measuring trends and customer data and placing your ads accordingly. Not only are your product ads highly targeted, but you can also learn more about what works with the system’s reporting tools and information.

Bottom line, if your ad network isn’t converting customers, then it’s not working. This widget ad network might be a good Plan B.

Just as in the analog world, it seems that there’s no limit to where you can place digital advertising. But, of course, if you’re looking to grow a business, that can be a good thing.

Enter AdCamo, the first “background advertising platform” of its kind. AdCamo lets publishers offer up and monetize the empty background space on a website or blog. Before you imagine the worst - AdCamo ads do not interfere with your site content or design, and publishers retain complete control over the size and relative obtrusiveness of the advertising they display. Choose between 3 formats - tiled (repetitive imagery), pillar (horizontal or vertical columns), and projection. Check out these examples to see how AdCamo ads appear.

AdCamo is compatible with all ad networks and can be added to your website with only a few lines of html code. In other words, if you are already in bed with an ad network, you can continue to do business through the AdCamo API, offering the same advertisers an innovative option for their campaigns. Choose between CPC, CPM or flat-rate revenue models.

Most publishers are open to selling ad space on their website or blog, so why not offer all your empty space to a single advertiser, with a single message? You may be surprised how uncluttered and highly engaging the experience can be.

Getting into the C-suite usually requires an invitation. Or maybe buying an expensive ad in a business magazine.

Now you can target decision makers by company size, job function, industry, and more by using LinkedIn DirectAds. If you don’t know, LinkedIn is the premier professional social network, with over 25 million users, who use the network daily to build business contacts and industry presence. LinkedIn has opened its doors to advertisers, provided they are a member of the LinkedIn community. While anyone can join (and it’s free), potential advertisers must have a legitimate profile and a minimum number of connections (the equivalent of friends). LinkedIn does this to protect the integrity of the network and keep spammers at bay.

At this time, LinkedIn only offers text display advertising, but the price is right and the location is unbeatable. Typically, ads go for $25 for a 30-day run, with minimal upcharges for increased impressions or audience targeting. Ads are placed on a CPM basis (no cost per click at this time). So if you want to specifically reach senior marketing executives or salespeople in a specific geography, you can for a few extra bucks. Ads appear above the fold on the member’s profile page or the LinkedIn homepage, displaying your text content, url, and a link to the advertiser’s LinkedIn profile.

So many blog fans never visit the site where the blog appears - thanks to RSS syndication. Question is, how do you advertise on a site that everyone is reading, but no one is on?

You can advertise on the feed itself with Feedburner, a trusted name in the RSS world (see Do you smell smoke? ). Feedburner now offers a highly-targetable ad network with RSS advertising capabilities. They boast an impressive inventory of publishers, including the Wall Street Journal Online, Wired News, USA Today, and many popular blogs. Ads appear as simple banner displays under the RSS content (as seen in this example); considering most RSS feeds are a few lines of text and a link, your advertisement gets maximum visibility in a traditionally unadulterated ad space.

The Feedburner Ad Server lets you target specific demographics by content channel - Arts & Entertainment, Computing & Technology, Business, and Current Affairs & Politics, to name a few. Advertisers maintain quality control with the AdClimate feature, which lets you suppress ad placement when sites feature inappropriate or irrelevant material to your campaign (i.e. it’s like reverse keywords).

Here’s an opportunity to be really smart with your online advertising dollars - why pay for expensive real restate if your audience isn’t even looking there?

Do you Twitter? Even if you don’t use it, you’ve probably heard of it - part micro-blogging platform, part social network, part self promotion tool. Some Twitterers boast followers (people plugged into their Twitter network) in the thousands. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to capitalize on the service’s popularity.

Now you can purchase advertising space on Twitter profile pages with a service called TwittAd . TwittAd gives Twitterers the opportunity to monetize their empty backgrounds and advertisers an “in” with the popular social service. They system is simple to navigate for both parties. Twitter users list their real estate on TwittAd, specify the number of “followers” they have (the real bartering chip here), and set their price. Advertisers purchase space at will and upload their ad within 24 hours of purchase. Users can accept the ad or deny the transaction; if accepted, TwittAd takes a 5% commission on the sale.

For the most part, TwittAds are unobtrusive, occupying only a portion of the left side of a user’s profile page. Considering most spaces sell for a couple of bucks (with lifecycles ranging from 1 day to 3 months) you can afford to experiment.

One way to get people talking about your products is to start the conversation yourself. Then, just sit back and listen.

That’s what consumer goods giant, Procter & Gamble, did with their mother-driven community space, Vocalpoint. Vocalpoint provides product discussions and lifestyle advice for thousands of women and homemakers- the target user of most of P&G’s products. The site frequently offers free samples and coupons for P&G products (e.g. Tide to Go Instant Stain Remover ) as well as other partnering companies.  In return, users weigh in on the products and share experiences with their friends, family, and other Vocalpoint members.

P&G’s role is limited, and somewhat veiled, but they gain more as a fly on the wall than as an active participant. Instead of spending a fortune to track perspectives on each brand, now they have a vehicle that can be used to track attitudes and perspectives across categories and brands.

The real take-away here is how easy it is to utilize web-based, community tools to create a virtual panel (PDF) to gain insight and drive word of mouth. Much of Vocalpoint’s success lies outside the site, as “connectors” (social butterflies, who are likely to share product information and make recommendations) spread the word. Of course, the free samples don’t hurt either.

Affiliate marketing can be a great opportunity to monetize your site’s traffic. The tough question - how to figure out which affiliate network and which specific offer is most likely to convert . . . and make you money?

One way, that also lets you maintain the integrity of your site, is to utilize a tool like AffSpy. AffSpy is an affiliate intelligence tool that not only catalogs partnering networks, but offers a way to rate their performance and see which ones provide the highest (and most likely) payout.

Curious to know what affiliate marketers might offer in return for putting something on your site? Browse available categories or search the AffSpy database by keyword (e.g. an online gourmet food seller might search for “coffee“). The search results display:

• a list of affiliate networks who want to advertise on that keyword
• their offers and accompanying creative (e.g. banner ad)
• the payout for leads you drive to their site
• a preview of their landing page
• current rating

To participate, you need to sign up for an AffSpy account (don’t worry, it’s free). Account holders can create a list of favorites and receive automatic notifications when their favorite affiliate networks change their bids. AffSpy updates several times throughout the day, so you know you are getting the most relevant offers as they become available. All in all, the system is easy to use and is a smart option for earning the most from your site.

With all the hype surrounding search and display advertising, it’s easy to forget that radio lives on. 33 million people tune into internet radio each week. Have you thought about advertising to these listeners?

Consider using TargetSpot, an internet radio advertising marketplace. Advertisers upload their ad spots, choose their audience (target by format, station, time, or geography), then sit back and listen to their ad stream over hundreds of internet radio stations. Ads can be in 10, 15, 30, or 60 second spots, and TargetSpot’s platform lets you record your message directly from your computer. Microphone shy? No problem, TargetSpot offers professional recording services, including scripts and voice-over talent. If you have previously recorded or professional pieces, you can upload those into the TargetSpot system and run them as well.

Choose between in-stream audio ads or pre-roll video clips and banner images to be played on the user’s streaming media player. Once you choose your ad, set your “bid” for the station or location where you want your ad to run. This is the maximum amount you are willing to pay to have you ad delivered (played) a 1000 times. The TargetSpot budgeting and bidding platform ensures you never pay more than you are comfortable with.

With the rising popularity of internet radio and simplicity of the TargetSpot system, you may want to bid on a piece of this action.

Need to boost site traffic? The idea of handing over hundreds, often thousands, of dollars for premium ad space or trading (begging for) links may be keeping you up at night.

Here’s an option. Adgridwork is an open (free) advertising network that lets bloggers and publishers barter their own real estate for advertising space on any of the thousands of sites in the Adgridwork network. You can choose what types of sites your ads appear on, and even monitor campaign progress, like impressions and conversions, through Adgridwork’s free metrics and tracking tools.

To get started, register your website or blog with the network, defining your site by category and any relevant keywords. This helps Adgridwork target advertisements to specific audiences. Once approved, your site is added to the mix and open for serving ads. In exchange, you ads will start running on other sites in the network. Adgridwork uses a simple merit system to reward its supporters- the more ad click-through’s your site generates, the more sites your ads appears on.

If you’re looking for a simple way to generate traffic or just tired of paying for ad services, consider using Adgridwork to promote your site.

When customers search for products or services, location is often a deciding factor. Google has long recognized this fact and has been steadily adding features to their Google Maps API. With a simple mouse click, a user can see restaurants, hotels, and gas stations as a map overlay, helping them identify and narrow down choices by vicinity.

Now, Google is literally letting companies put their brand on the map. Google Mapplets is a free developer application that lets you add your company or product information as a place point on Google Maps. Technically, it’s a mini-webpage, so pretty much anything you can think of within the constraints of html is allowed, including images, JavaScript, and Flash. Let’s say Peppy’s Pizza adds a Google Mapplet. Customers can access their menu, read restaurant reviews, or feast their eyes on their amazing Chicago-style deep dish pies, directly from Google Maps.

Mapplets are fairly simple to create but require basic web development knowledge to write the code. Considering Google is offering a free platform for exposing your brand to millions and complete content control, it may be well worth the investment.

Ready to make the leap beyond those old text and display ads? Maybe it’s time to dip your toe into video ads.

If you’re wondering where to go to place those video ads, YuMe, a broadband video advertising network, should be on your list. With over 400 premium video sites on tap and 120 million unique visitors a month, it’s the largest of its kind, and includes NBC, BitTorrent, and Microsoft among its providers. YuMe was designed exclusively to monetize and track video content. Advertisers can choose by programming verticals (like entertainment, lifestyle, news, music, and sports,) or target audiences based on geography or content popularity. And regardless of the delivery platform (streaming, download, mobile), YuMe provides real-time monitoring and analytics, so there’s no guesswork involved when measuring the success of your campaign.

Video ad production and placement doesn’t take a ton of money. Are your old notions standing in the way?

Bloggers are looking for high caliber advertisers. Advertisers are looking to reach a targeted audience of blog readers.

Enter the broker - Federated Media Publishing. It connects marketers with a network of respected sites that cater to targeted segments of readers. Marketers can place advertising on any of Federated’s member sites or select a site(s) based on its recognition or audience makeup (business people, moms, etc). Sign up, choose your blog, choose the time period, then fork over the moolah. You’re still not out of the woods until you’re confirmed. Blog authors retain veto power over which ads appear on their site.

Federated’s prices depend on ad size and of course, ad location. If you’re looking to reach a targeted audience and you know they read blogs, give it a try. If you’re speaking directly to your target, a high CPM could very well be worth it.