"A source close to the company says the bank will mainly be used to vet numerous incoming queries – not to solicit buyers or investors," reports Rafat Ali.  "Another source, this one among the interested parties, says that FM is indeed looking to raise as much as $50 million, and the valuation is in the $125 million pre-money range."

The first scenario might make a little more sense, given the current market situation.  A lot of VCs aren’t acting too nervous, though, so asking for money couldn’t hurt.

Owen Thomas introduces one more factor into the equation, writing, "Battelle’s choice of a banker is curious: Savvian is known for helping companies in dire straits."

So there’s quite a range of options, really, and we wouldn’t expect anything else on a slow Friday.  Should one of the rumors solidify, though, we’ll be sure to provide updates.

"Welcome to the new Boing Boing!" Mark Frauenfelder wrote on the popular blog. Boing Boing has been one of the Internet’s most widely read blogs, as they add new items regularly to their "directory of wonderful things."

Since Federated Media head John Battelle has long been the "band manager" behind the blog, helping manage its numerous little graphic advertisements, we aren’t surprised to see his organization delivering more ads on Boing Boing. Text ads from FM’s server and the ubiquitous Google AdSense program appear alternately in the ad-dedicated right sidebar of the site.

Even better, an ad displayed by Google follows the no-holds-barred ethic of Boing Boing. As shown in the screenshot we caught, Google feels that "piercing nipples" would appeal greatly to the Boing Boing readership.

Thanks, Google! (click for full view)

The most distinct change comes in the top right side of the blog. It’s the area where people tend to look first, and a highly desirable place for websites of all kinds to place premium ads. Boing Boing is no exception, featuring a rich media ad for HP during out look.

We like the larger font size used by default with the redesign, but we will miss the classic look. Boing Boing emerged from its revamp with greater readability, and a sharper focus on monetization, but we’re sure the content will be as wonderful as always.

This time, it’s an ethics debate about whether or not John Battelle’s arrangement, whereby bloggers in the FM network answered the question "When did you know your business was People Ready?" on their blogs and, in return, Microsoft placed cost-per-click ads on the network.

Valleywag called them out, specifically Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Paull Kedrosky, Matt Marshall and Fred Wilson (who was in the eye of the last blogstorm), calling them "spokesbloggers."

And then, the blogosphere went ape.

Om Malik was quick to respond, apologizing and calling for FM to pull the ads:

I have requested Federated Media, our sales partners, suspend the campaign on our network of sites, and they have. We are turning off any such campaigns that might be running on our network. Would I participate in a similar campaign again? Nothing is worth gambling the readers’ trust.

John Battelle agreed:

Well, we certainly stepped in it….Microsoft was attempting something new, certainly something entirely new for the company, in any case – it was inviting authors into the marketing conversation. We tried to do it in a way that was transparent, that had integrity, where no editorial space was purchased.

Michael Arrington, though, was a bit more defiant:

 So here’s my position on all of this: Go pound sand. People understand that if there’s text in an ad box, someone is paying for it to be there.

The main thing I’m pissed off about right now is that they pulled all the ads, which mean we’re taking a revenue hit. We’re running a business here, and have payroll to make. We run ads to make that payroll. Those ads have now been pulled.

For those of you that are too Midwest suburban, "pound sand" is explained at the Urban Dictionary, which won’t explain to Arrington’s employees why their paychecks bounced, or why it’s not really Valleywag’s fault.

Whichever side you take on the issue, Fake Steve Jobs opines about which side the bloggers took it (complete with illustrations):

He [Arrington] ends up sounding like a gal who’s trying to convince you that she’s not a "prostitute," she’s an "escort."

What makes this delicious is that these "spokesbloggers" are the same sanctimonious tw*ts who are constantly spouting bullsh*t about the glories of "citizen journalism" and patting themselves on the back and congratulating themselves for being so much more ethical and independent than the dreaded "Mainstream Media."

Ouch.

Battelle notes in his lengthy post at FM that he still thinks there is a future for conversational marketing, and some of the more objective (if there is such a thing) bloggers have noted that the whole scandal could have been avoided with full disclosure about the campaign.

A ClickZ report said the pairing of Ask.com with the Ninja crowd will continue through September. Ask.com appears as a sponsor in the pre-roll for the videos.

At the end of a clip, the ninja reads an ad while a search term is displayed on the screen. Going to Ask.com and searching for one of these special terms, like ningiants, brings up an Ask Smart Answer.

That is linked to a special bonus video created by the Ask A Ninja clan. The report said they created nine videos and search words for the campaign, which has run for a couple of weeks and lured 8.3 percent of Ask A Ninja’s viewers to Ask.com.

“There isn’t advertising that is able to drive that kind of response rate. But there certainly is opportunity around the ninja to drive that response rate around himself and his content,” Federated Media’s Chas Edwards, chief revenue officer, said in the report.

Once the ninja campaign has been completed, we have to wonder if Ask.com will do something with pirates after that.

JP Morgan Partners led Federated Media’s (FM) first round of financing for a currently undisclosed amount. The firm joins such initial investors as The New York Times Company, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Network, and techie book publisher Tim O’Reilly in backing Battelle’s venture.

A statement from FM described what the endeavor hopes to accomplish (besides making Hefty bags full of cash, natch):

The inclusion of Digg is notable, as the site has supported itself through placement of Google AdSense blocks throughout its pages. Those Google ads are still appearing on Digg, so their switchover to FM has not happened yet.

People can get a feel for the type of stories and writers in the new FM network by visiting its authors page and reading some of their work collected on a “best of” page.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.