Here's a prediction: text ads will force weblogs to become more like traditional media sites. Shorter front pages, more internal links, longer content. The reasoning? Google Adsense, which brings text ads to smaller publishers, is already transforming the economics of niche web publishing.
On Gawker and Gizmodo, two of the sites I help run, we've put Google text ads on the internal pages, which represent a small percentage of the inventory of the sites. The results are sufficiently encouraging to prompt a redesign. We're thinking of shortening the front page, posting up more links to individual items, and encouraging the republishing of headlines from the site -- all with the purpose of driving more readers through to the internal and category pages. Google serves up text ads according to an analysis of the context. Internal pages are more specific, and therefore more appropriate for targeted text ads.
And what will blogs look like, after they're optimized for Google? Much more like traditional media sites, designed to keep viewers bouncing around from item to item. Google text ads will give blogs a business model; but they'll also warp the format. Google AdSense
