PerezHilton.com Loses One Advertiser But Gains Several More

Posted on January 7, 2007

Racy content and lawsuits (see here) so far aren't holding back advertisers from placing ads on the PerezHilton.com gossip blog. One ad was pulled recently from PerezHilton.com because of objections to some revealing celebrity photographs on the website according to a MediaPost article but there have been more than enough ads to take its place. The MediaPost says PerezHilton.com, which uses the Blogads ad network, has run ads for six different tv series in just the past week or so.

The ad formats have varied from featured spots in the right-hand skyscraper unit to full site takeovers. Series promoted include "Grey's Anatomy" and "Gay, Straight or Taken" on Lifetime, "Wildfire" on ABC Family, "Dirt" on FX, "Beauty and the Geek" on The CW Network, and "Surreal Life: Fame Games" on VH1. Spots on the site--arranged by blog ad network Blogads--range from $800 per week to $9,000 per week for placements in the skyscraper to significantly more for full site takeovers. Blogads declined to disclose the exact figure.

Blogads founder Henry Copeland said it is the site's young demographic and huge impressions that advertisers are after.

Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, said that brands are willing to advertise with Perez to tap into the blog's enormous readership. Blogads reports 15.6 million ad impressions weekly on the premium ad spot on PerezHilton.com, making it the most highly trafficked space in the entire Blogads network. "The most important factor: everyone at agencies and the clients is reading Perez," he said. "They know their target audience is reading it. And they know they have to be there if they want to hit America's 2 million trend-mavenest women in their twenties and thirties--the women who are the queen bees in their offices for entertainment news."

Perez Hilton will need to sustain its massive traffic in order to continue to interest advertisers. He will have to be able to fend off lawsuits from the photography agencies so he can continue running celebrity photographs. PerezHilton.com is also not without competition from the thousands of other celebrity blogs. A Broadcasting & Cable article says other celebrity sites used recently in a FX ad campaign included Gawker and PopSugar in addition to PerezHilton.com.