AdCamo is good for Monetization, but is it good for Marketers?

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By Mallory Dash

AdCamo, a new online advertising tool launched in beta last week, allows publishers to generate ad revenue by monetizing their sites’ backgrounds with sponsored backgrounds and matching banner ads.

Mega sites like MySpace and Perez Hilton have long made money off of sponsored background ads. AdCamo allows smaller publishers and bloggers to make money off of the “white space” surrounding their content, and adds extra value by providing core analytics and metrics. For instance, the service can tell the advertiser the time it takes from when the background ad loads to when a click occurs on that ad’s banner. This information can help advertisers adjust their strategy and more accurately target their market.

As a digital marketing tool, AdCamo could potentially allow marketers to engage new audiences. However, without a serious pre-formed following behind the content, there is concern that new bloggers hungry for ad dollars may compromise the integrity (and readability) of their work by using a product like AdCamo. This, in turn, may decrease the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns using AdCamo.

The reactions to AdCamo have been mixed.

Mashable’s Adam Ostrow says that AdCamo “adds to the monetization mix,” provided that publishers have a say in the kinds of ads that are posted on their site. If all is done right, Ostrow reasons that AdCamo could possibly find some sort of equilibrium between the necessary readability of a blog, and the blatant commercialism of such a campaign.

Rafe Needleman agrees, to a point. He concedes that for publishers, the service is easy to implement. As for advertisers, this kind of “in-your-face” campaign is certainly not ignorable. However, Needleman maintains that Adcamo will force “users and readers [to] pay a price. These background ads can really junk up a Web page and can confuse the reader about which parts of the site are content, and which are advertiser-provided.”

All in all, AdCamo seems to carry equal potential for negative feedback and financial gain. Marketers might be wise to take a wait-and-see approach on AdCamo before integrating it into their own campaigns.