• TheNextWeb, Tuesday, November 29, 2011 2:42 PM

No, not AdSense. WordAds -- That’s what WordPress.com is calling its new, very AdSense-like advertising program. Made possible by a recent partnership with Federated Media, WordAds will carry premium display ads from respected brands, but will only be available to select, high-performing WordPress blogs. “It’s open to publicly visible blogs with custom domains, and factors such as level of traffic and engagement, type of content, and language used will factor into whether a blog gets accepted,” TheNextWeb writes.

Premium or not, news of the problem raises the obvious question: What took WordPress so long? “With 50,000 new WordPress.com blogs coming online every day according to the company, it’s perhaps surprising that this is the first time we’ve seen revenue-sharing ads available as an option,” TheNextWeb adds. The answer? According to Jon Burke, head of advertising at WordPress.com: “We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense.” Zing!

Read the whole story at TheNextWeb »