Established wisdom dictates that blogs are sacred and should therefore remain free from advertising or the kind of commercialism that might warp editorial values, curtailing honest, unbiased expression… right?

Well, set to test this status quo is ebuzzing, a ‘social media advertising’ service from the Wikio stable that has just launched in the UK, aiming to connect bloggers with advertisers for cash.

The concept of ‘blog-vertising’ isn’t anything new, with a raft of companies in the US trying to carve out market share while ebuzzing itself launched its French HQ back in 2006.

As an advertising channel,  the blogosphere makes total sense. Certain blogs not only boast a valuable and rich list of subscribers, but have also developed a highly evolved authority, making bloggers a sought after commodity for advertisers.

In Europe, ebuzzing has already run campaigns for the likes of ebay, Diesel, Mastercard, Microsoft and Toyota, and with such high profile brands on board, should bloggers here have anything to fear from the company landing in the UK?

To test the appetite, we set up a poll daddy questionnaire asking; ‘what do you think of services that bring video ads and bloggers together?’

The response (although unscientific) was unanimous, with 100% of paticipants endorsing it as an interesting new channel for advertisers, which I have to agree with, but how does it work?

According to ebuzzing’s press release; “Once registered, bloggers are able to select which campaign they would like to participate in, based upon their interests and likes. Brands are then able to engage with these social media communities through video broadcasting, ethical and disclosed sponsored conversation, widget seeding and forum conversation. By paying bloggers for their work, based upon pre agreed campaign parameters and a blog’s Wikio ranking, ebuzzing ensures accountability and scale.”

What is great about blog-vertising, or social media advertising in the case of ebuzzing, is that it’s up to the blogger whether they deem the campaigns on offer both relevant and interesting to their community. Should they decide that they are, then it is a win-win, as the author earns and the brand benefits.

Compared with banner advertising and even search, blog-vertising offers an advertising channel though which sponsored content can be broadcast to an incredibly targeted audience as bloggers live or die based on the relevance of the content that they post.

With the rules and perceived etiquette around social media and advertising constantly evolving, the ebuzzing service should be congratulated for creating a service which not only recognises and respects the unique requirements of blogger, advertiser and audience, but actually monetises the whole process.

Steve is a director/consultant at mobile and wireless specialist PR agency, infomob.