Q:  I was creepin’ through cbsinteractive.com/advertise/ recently and stumbled on their self-serve options. The thing that stuck out to me was that they were offering ad space within their newsletters.

I know lots of comics offer their strips through email, and that the “e-newsletter” format is popular for including blog posts and discount codes…but this is honestly the first time it ever occurred to me to use that as an advertising opportunity. For CBS’ gaming website, GameSpot, a 160×600 ad in their newsletter costs a flat fee of $1,300.

Another important point is that, for GameSpot at least, these ads are even targeted! They seem to be keeping track of which subscribers own which consoles; if you only want to run your ad for PlayStation fans, you can do that and (presumably) the ad will only be in the newsletters for users that said, somewhere, that they owned PlayStations.

Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but this is blowing my mind. I thought it was worth bringing to the community, and I am particularly interested in hearing your reaction.

— Graham Hamilton

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