Web loggers are hoping there's money in numbers. And so are Henry Copeland and John Battelle, two entrepreneurs who want to make it easy for advertisers to use blogs to reach customers.

Battelle, whose publishing credits include co-founding Wired and launching the Industry Standard magazines, said his next venture, Federated Media, could start this fall.

FM will be a group of 10 to 20 "high-quality, high-authority" technology blogs, selected personally by Battelle. They will include his own Searchblog and Boing Boing, which he oversees.

At the Online Media, Marketing and Advertising West conference in San Francisco, Battelle expected to complete a round of financing for the project this week, according to MediaPost Publications.

Battelle said he wants a federation of authors who've already found an audience, according to notes of his presentation published by Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc. "We'll work with the agencies to place the advertising," he said.

Meanwhile, Blogads.com has plowed that field for more than a year. Henry Copeland has been placing ads on blogs that have signed up with him. He recently began offering blogs by interest group.

"The bloggers themselves build/maintain the categorical groupings," he wrote on his log. There are 17 networks, including food, baseball and gossip. An advertiser can buy some or all of a category after reviewing a blog's traffic and ad rates. Organizing networks by interest makes selling blog advertising much easier, rather than pitching an advertiser on individual Web logs, Copeland said.

 Filed Under: TECHNOLOGY
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