The pre-electioneering for the 2010 General Election campaign has begun, and political parties have fired their opening salvos. It’s already hard to miss MessageSpace-affiliated bloggers on mainstream news channels – and we can’t wait to see where the next six months will take us.

To kick off the new year (and politically charged atmosphere), MessageSpace is following up from last year’s sponsored debate at the House of Commons in conjunction with the Henry Jackson Society and Delib. The second debate in this series, titled: “Technology not Policy will win Election 2010″ will look at the increasing need to spread the political word of the parties, but does that sometimes mean watering down the content? The event will be held on Monday 18, January in the Grand Committee Room in Westminster Hall.

The host will again be Danny Alexander MP (Lib Dem), and the panellists this time are: Rishi Saha (Tory), Kerry McCarthy MP (Labour), Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC) and Julie Meyer (BBC Dragon’s Den & Internet Entrepreneur).

We look forward to seeing your there!

Next Monday (14 December) will see crack teams of digital war-planners being extraordinarily rendered in black vans to an undisclosed location.  With only months to go before full scale political war breaks out, digital advertising and campaigns agency MessageSpace has, in the tradition of the trenches of the First World War, organised a truce with drinks.  After paintball.

Combatants from CCHQ and Labour’s digital teams will be fighting with leading bloggers and online campaigners from the political world.   It could be brutal, it will be fun.

MessageSpace were pleased to sponsor a debate at the House of Commons in conjunction with the Henry Jackson Society and Delib.

Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes blog), Peter Kellner (YouGov), Michael White (Associate Editor, the Guardian), Grant Shapps MP (Shadow Minister for Housing) and Nick Robinson (BBC Political Editor) contributed to a very, very lively debate.

Hilton & Hilton Limited is, as of May 27, 2009, no longer a shareholder in MessageSpace / EOS Online Media Limited.  Hilton and Hilton’s shareholding was purchased by the existing shareholders.  MessageSpace’s Managing Director Kelly Nightingale paid tribute to the original managing director

“Alex Hilton was one of the original founders and the first managing director of the firm.  It was his original idea to form an advertising network to represent political blogs.  Over the last three years we have grown from six blogs to forty blogs, branching out into video viral distribution and acting as a niche media buyer for savvy advertisers across the political spectrum.  It is a cliche in business to say of the departing that ‘he wants to be free to concentrate on other things’, in Alex’s case it really is true and he also wanted to be free of any perceived conflicts of interest.  We wish Alex well with his political career.”

Background :

EOS Online Media Limited trading as “MessageSpace” is a privately held firm established in July 2006.

The advertising network reaches a broadsheet audience of a million unique readers and delivers 25 million advertisements monthly.

The firm places advertising with some 40 website publishers focused on current affairs and politics across the political spectrum. It has revenue sharing agreements with the majority of the top-ranked political blogs in Britain.  It also has a growing specialist niche digital media buying agency business with politically savvy clients such as Microsoft, HSBC, the Cooperative Bank, Help the Aged, the Labour Party, Liberal Democratic Party and the Conservative Party.

We are proud to say that over the last three years we have paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds to bloggers, sustaining and developing new media voices.

MessageSpace was happy to sponsor (along with Blue State Digital) the Progress “Labour 2.0″ conference on “campaigning for the net generation”.

As well as our very own Jag Singh other speakers included Derek Draper, owner of LabourList, Sue Macmillan the Labour Party’s New Media Campaigns Taskforce Leader, Matthew McGregor, UK MD of Blue State Digital and Dougie Alexander, Labour’s Election Campaigns Co-ordinator.  Conference report here.

MessageSpace is the advertising network representing Britain’s leading bloggers and selling advertising on their behalf. 2009 is our third year in business and we have compiled some statistics which we hope will answer the perennial journalist’s question – “so how much do bloggers make”?

During the fourth quarter of 2008 the numbers for bloggers represented by our advertising network broke down as follows:

• The single highest paid blogger had sales on average of £3,872 per month.
• The top 10% of bloggers had monthly sales averaging £2,861 in (Q4 ‘08) a rise of 64% from £1,741 last year (Q4 ’07).
• The middle 40% of bloggers had average monthly sales of £351.
• The remaining 50% had average monthly sales of £54.

Jag Singh, MessageSpace’s CIO says “What the numbers show is that for our leading bloggers it is now possible to be a full-time professional. For the semi-professional bloggers it provides a few thousand pounds a year, earning them the enough for a family holiday. For the rest it certainly pays their internet bills and enough to upgrade to a new lap-top annually.

“We doubled turnover last year and expect to grow this year despite the negative economic outlook. Advertising spend is shifting to digital new media and that includes non-traditional media outlets such as blogs. We offer agencies access to that fragmented audience on the scale required.”

-

Background Data :

EOS Online Media Limited trading as “MessageSpace” is a privately held firm established in July 2006.

The advertising network reaches a broadsheet audience of 800,000 readers and delivers 12 million advertisements monthly.

The firm places advertising with over 30 website publishers focused on current affairs and politics across the political spectrum. It has revenue sharing agreements with the majority of the top-ranked political blogs in Britain.  It also has a growing specialist niche digital media buying agency business with clients such as Help the Aged, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Conservative Party.

Over the last two years we have paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds to bloggers sustaining and developing new media voices.

Over the summer MessageSpace acted as media buyers for Labour’s Alan Johnson MP during the Labour party’s deputy leadership battle and for Chris Bryant MP with his ground breaking video/pamphlet about Welsh Broadcasting (see www.broadcastwales.org.uk).

We also acted for the Conservative Party advising them on their online campaign placement, with their ads reaching out online to the Gay community and also the readers of sites like Popbitch.

The Liberal Democrat Party called on us to help them reach out beyond their comfort zone into traditional Labour party territory, we placed their anti-War advertising on the New Statesman magazine’s website amongst others.