Baron writes on his blog Dembot about the EBay auction that Rocketboom held last year when the site was nearly out of money, revealing that the one-week ad package which took in $40,000 actually only met the site's reserve. After subsequent "internal turmoil" at the site (i.e. the blowup that led to the ousting of anchor Amanda Congdon), Baron writes about how he and his team, in creating the ads for the site's advertisers, had difficulty reconciling their "conviction" for the sponsor's product, and ended up spending a lot more energy than necessary on creating and producing appropriate ads. But maybe that wasn't so important, they found out:

To our suprise, during the process, we learned that companies weren't really interested in us having complete conviction in them anyway. Ultimately, they really were big fans of Rocketboom and they wanted us (and our audience) to know that. *They* had the conviction in *us*.

So that's why we took that original model and flipped it. Our relationship to the sponsor now starts off with a sign of gratitude for their support.

In return, we have a great, critical audience that a sponsor can leverage to provide feedback and insight into their situation. ...


Starting today, Baron writes, YouTube will be the first to try the new ad model (and RB will start up a YouTube account for its episodes). Sponsors will pay $3,000 per episode until September 1st, and the $5,000 per episode after that. Here's what they'll get:


SPONSORSHIP ELEMENTS:

#1 Post Roll Sponsorship Gratitude. White text on black background. Company logo and byline. 7 seconds. Travels with all videos to all platforms (incl. web, phone, tv, portables). Quicktime videos online are clickable to open company website in a new browser window.

#2 Company Name & Link. Travels as metadata to most platforms (inc. RSS feeds). Increases company link value across the web.

#3 Sponsor Blog Entry. Click here for details.

#4 Quicktime Chapter Marker. Easy access to sponsor message from chapter drop-down box.