As many would know, AdBrite is a text ad marketplace, where publishers sell space on their sites (or blogs) to advertisers for a daily, weekly, monthly (or any other time frame, really) period. While CPC and Intermission advertisements are available, this BlogAd-style, time period advertising system is probably the most popular choice among both publishers and advertisers.

Recently, we’ve been thinking of putting up AdBrite on a “network”-wide basis - though is-there isn’t a network per se - which will result in the same AdBrite adverts being shown across all is-there blogs. The benefits of this are obvious: More impressions, clickthroughs and thus, lower ACPCs for advertisers, making each advertising deal more advantageous. More advantageous deals then tend to attract more advertisers.

But the downside is equally clear: Adverts will be contextually irrelevant across many blogs due to the “network”-wide nature of the advertisements. Just look at b5media’s implementation of this to see what I mean. There are advertisements about plastic on entertainment or even blogging blogs like Problogger.

So, it’s clearly going to be pretty hard balancing revenue vs. relevance when such an advertising system does get implemented. However, that is unlikely to stop us from trying it out as “network”-wide Adbrite ads would definitely allow us to access a larger advertiser market.