Advertising Age International
I'm very excited to announce that the Power 150 ranking of top marketing blogs is joining forces with Advertising Age, the world's leading marketing and media publication. The Ad Age + Power 150 partnership will help make the list an even greater tool (more powerful) since Ad Age has a dedicated staff, a giant readership and more resources than I do. The Power 150 is already one of the standards by which many bloggers measure themselves. The hope is that Ad Age can help make it a standard by which the entire industry will measure them, and thus help boost the profile of the whole blogging community.
As an individual who is passionate about marketing, I have taken the Power 150 as far as possible. It far exceeded my expectations, but also far exceeded my abilities, time, and personal resources. Today, the Power 150's multimetric algorithm ranks almost 350 marketing blogs - 150 plus honorable mentions. Several hundred hours have already gone into creating, establishing and maintaining the Power 150, and this is an opportunity for Ad Age to take it to the next level, immediately creating value for readers as well as listed bloggers (considering the potential for a ton of traffic). According to the media kit, adage.com gets over 354,000 monthly unique visitors. Across online and print, Ad Age has a a total reach of more than 800,000 people including many senior agency, marketing and media executives every month! Bottom line, the marketing world - including the marketing blogosphere - will benefit tremendously from the Ad Age + Power 150 partnership.
MOVING FORWARD
Everything will be status quo for the immediate future, but soon Ad Age will be hosting the Power 150 on adage.com. Ad Age will likely/hopefully improve the list with a new design and the addition of some new bells and whistles. Jonah Bloom, editor of Ad Age, said the publication will use the Power 150 as the main editorial benchmark when referencing bloggers in print and online (i.e., "according to David Armano's Logic+Emotion, No. 15 on the Power 150 ranking of marketing blogs."). Jonah also said that Ad Age will continue the Power Profile Q&A series, which I will remain involved with as an adjunct Ad Age contributor. As they manage the Power 150, Ad Age will surely be looking for advertisers and sponsors that are interested in reaching all walks of marketing executives, agencies, bloggers, podcasters and more - so if you're interested in reaching this audience, please email me.
My readers are getting the inside scoop here, but stay tuned as Ad Age is working on its own announcement of the partnership. I'll keep you posted as more details become available, but get excited because all those blogs ranked on the list should start to see an uptick in traffic once Ad Age's readers begin to discover the Power 150.
Jonah offered these thoughts: "We've been trying for a while now to work out how to point our readers towards the best of the media and marketing blogs. To that end we've done some linking out from our Out of Site blog, but don't have a comprehensive resource for our readers. Of course we could have put something together based on our own opinions or bloggers' traffic numbers, but Todd's brilliant creation goes way beyond that and creates a ranking that combines traffic, influence and quality into a ranking of the best out there. We're excited to be able to bring that to our readers. We also hope it'll be a great thing for all bloggers listed. Ad Age already provides our readers with the definitive rankings of the country's leading advertisers; the leading agenices in most disciplines; and the leading traditional media companies. The fact we'll now also be ranking the media and marketing blogs says a lot about how important that community has become in a very short time."
KUDOS AND COMMENTS
In one of my first email exchanges with Ad Age, I said "the list integrates perfectly with Advertising Age's mission statement of delivering advertising, marketing and media news wherever and whenever busy marketing executives want it." Kudos to all those bloggers on the list who perhaps unknowingly carry out that mission and faithfully deliver quality marketing content every day.
What started out as my attempt to add a tiny sliver of value within the massive marketing blogosphere has blossomed into an amazing resource for so many. Since launching the Power 150 seven months ago, I've received hundreds of 'thank you' emails because people are discovering new blogs from the list. In return, I'd like to thank all those who have been so kind and generous. In particular, I would like to call very special attention to Marjolein Hoekstra of CleverClogs and Mark Woodman of TechBrew.
Marjolein donated her time and expertise to help develop the "Kitchen Sink" feature, which added tremendous functionality to the Power 150 - including a "river of news" combined feed and a search-and-subscribe function (read more). Mark saved me hours upon hours by generously donating hours and hours in order to write code and automate the Power 150. Thanks to Mark's automation, the Power 150 went global (read more). Also thanks to Henri van der Hoof for the custom Power 150-Google Toolbar Button that he created.