Advertisers need bloggers.

Not for the reasons you might think.

Advertisers need bloggers for the same reason they need Athletes and Celebrities and the entire world of flotsam and folk heroes that make up the social fabric.

Advertisers need bloggers, dear readers, because our words sell products.

Just Do it!

Traditional online advertising is a game of numbers. If you buy up enough web properties, you can deliver as many new eyeballs to your site as you want. The problem is that these eyeballs convert at rates that would make your statistician cry and worse than that, they’re expensive.

Not liking either of these realities, what advertisers are beginning to discover is the secret of the web. The secret, for those still out of the loop, is that there is one failsafe form of advertising that does hand over fist better than all the rest and its name is endorsement.

If you are looking to make a major purchase, most of us will turn to our friends for advice. If you are looking for a new movie or a new book, once again you will tap your network for the latest and the greatest. People like to receive recommendations from other people. Even if they aren’t as good as what an algorithm could cook up, there is something about the act of asking for advice that gives us the warm fuzzies.

Advertisers discovered this years ago in traditional media, and their answer to the question was the product placement. What better way to tap into our visceral desire to be “advised” by our favorite idols than to put Cokes in their hands or iPods in their ears?

Online bloggers are taking the same place that celebrities have in the “real world,” albiet on a much smaller scale.

We have a following, our words carry far and we have a platform ripe for — you guessed it — product placements. Over the last few years, many an attempt, ranging from paid posting to advertorials have come onto the scene to try to capitalize on this fact. The difference has been that unlike traditional media consumers, blog readers seem substantially more resistant to being advertised to in this way.

We rebel against it, in fact, and we tar and feather any publisher who experiments with these tactics. We do this even though most of us have reconciled ourselves with the fact that sports stars sponsor tennis shoes and that most of the media we consume is paid for, in part, by sponsors and advertisers.

This raises two questions, both of which will color the next new wave evolution of monetization in the blogosphere.

The first, “What is it about blogging that makes readers so resistant to ‘sponsored endorsements?’ ”

The second, “Are advertisers savvy enough to find a way around our misgivings?”

Why are these important? If advertising on the web is going to be a sustainable industry, advertisers are going to have to find a better way to reach us. Their current model simply not robust enough. There is only so long that any organism can stay standing on two broken legs.

Finally, let’s face it, most brand managers with a sense for the web would like nothing more than for every blogger in their vertical to give a sterling review of their product for free. Just a little further down their list, they would love to have a market to pay for it.

The only question left, will be let them?

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