Blog ads do reach certain demographic groups but don't necessarily generate word of mouth, according to Gawker Media founder and publisher Nick Denton, who was speaking at an Ad:Tech panel earlier this week, writes MediaPost. "I can't really point to any examples of posts that originated from ads themselves," he says of the 14 blogs he publishes. Denton advised that marketers instead purchase ads on blogs for the reason they do on other media: to reach target demographic groups.

Shawn Gold of the AOL-acquired Weblogs said word of mouth about products comes from organic posts; the ads that have worked best on the Weblogs enthusiast blogs are advertorials: "The text-based ads are performing better than the dynamic ads," he said.

Steve Rubel, VP of client services of PR firm CooperKatz & Company, said that advertising on blogs assisted marketers in "finding the customer evangelists" and "empowering them with tools."