So, on the heels of my post about Google AdSense as a community monitizer, I ran across this MediaPost article documenting the trend back toward more traditional CPM advertising on social network driven sites:

StyleDiary isn't the only social networking property to recently start offering image ads. Photo-sharing site Flickr also recently struck a deal for its first branding campaign. In Flickr's case, the marketer was the camera company, Nikon.

So what's happening here? The use of AdSense as a mechanism to motivate user participation is very different than monetizing the community for the sole benefit of the community purveyor. AdSense is great for the former, and if your community's popularity can attract them, traditional advertisers appear to be preferable for the latter.

technorati tags: onlinecommunity