Ning, a social network who became famous (or infamous) for shutting down its free service in favor of a pure premium model could be launching its own ad platform soon instead of relying upon the Google Borg (aka AdSense). Update: false alarm. See below for details.
Tomorrow, Ning intends to announce its plans for the future, including new features and pricing plans. And we think we may have just stumbled across one of them: a new advertising product that resembles AdSense. Maybe they will call it NingSense (via TechCrunch)
Ning is apparently experimenting by promoting sites already on its own network, although that will probably change in the future once the company rolls out the platform.
It will be interesting to see the revenue split between Ning and creators, as well as whether the advertising model will be enough to entice bloggers to ditch free alternativeness like BuddyPress.
Ning has not released a comment yet denying or validating the rumors, although we will hopefully hear more about “NingSense” tomorrow (at least according to the rumors).
Update: Apparently the Ning ads that were being seen are apart of a public service campaign which promotes charities using Ning’s services. Ning thus far has no desire to take on Google in its own backyard.
