There are several ways that you can advertise your business online. For starters, you’re probably going to need a website of some kind, but how do you convince the millions (billions?) of web surfers to visit your site and look a little deeper into your products and services? Some people attempt AdWords campaigns through Google Adsense. Other purchase banner space. One of the newest strategies that has been developed is the Advertorial. More specifically, the people at ReviewMe — a service that allows advertisers to purchase reviews on blogs — have expanded their portfolio into this arena.

John Chow recently wrote on the topic of advertorials. In a nutshell, an advertorial functions the same way as a paid review, except the blogger doesn’t write the content; you, as the advertiser, do. In this way, it would be akin to taking out a full-page ad in a trade magazine or having a special advertising section in the local newspaper. And how do you usually react to those ads? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The people at ReviewMe have outlined three critical advantages to advertisers:

• You can browse our marketplace of top blogs and choose the blogs to run your message which you remain in full control over.
• Advertorials also feature full impression and click tracking so you can measure your return on investment.
• Advertorials are a great way to generate buzz and traffic while controlling the message and measuring your results!

Basically, you become a “guest blogger” for the blog of your choice — paying the same fee as you would for a regular ReviewMe paid review — except you have a very distinct motive in mind. Will this “advertorial” strategy take off? What’s your take on it? Personally, I think it just shows how mainstream blogging has become, because as I mentioned above, this advertising strategy has been in place with print media for some time now.