Yesterday I posted on the fact that Forrester has given the thumbs up for sponsored comment i.e. paying or backing bloggers to comment on a topic, product, brand etc. The Forrester report is entitled: “Add sponsored conversations to your toolbox”.

Forrester re-visited the topic of March 6 as it has generated a lot of feedback. Google have said that sponsored content should not appear in organic search results, which make sense. This is a impossible thing for Google to police – Forrester has recommended that sponsored content should have the tag ‘no follow’, which will prevent search engines picking it up. I wonder if clients will invest in sponsored content knowing that it will not be searchable.

Forrester breaks sponspored content down into two streams:

1. Editorial Stream: allowing paid for guest writers, thank you posts, disclosed sponsorships

2. Out of the Editorial Stream: banner ads, sponsorships, text links

The danger with sponsored content is that it may marginalise or compromise the blogosphere – the value of which is based on the fact that each blog represents an authentic and independent voice.

However, the simple issue of long-term viability and economics provides the need for bloggers to seek a return – some form of compensation – for what is a very time consuming task. The purests will argue that the commercialisation of blogs denegrates this form of consumer media. The counter argument is that commercialisation will enable blogs to survive and grow for the long term.

In time, perhaps high profile bloggers will be to the leverage the fact that they don’t accept any form of sponsorship as a source of ‘competitive advantage’.

I have seen a few examples of bloggers that make it very clear that they accept sponsorship and transparency is the absolute key here on both sides (blogger and sponsor) – as it is in the print media (where advertorial or sponsored feature clearly inform the reader that this is paid for editorial).

Tags: Blogging, editorial, Forrester, Google, sponsored, transparency