Ads in feeds
Earlier this week, Keith removed ads from his RSS feeds because they weren’t generating any revenue. Roger Johansson removed them as well. A problem with ads in feeds is that they’re not contextual (see Slashdot’s feed for an example). Adsense for feeds has much better text matching and text ads work, when they get the user to their goal. But in RSS, the goal is to read the feed, not specifically find a product or topic.
Headlines, blurbs, links
If others find that RSS ads aren’t working, we may also see bloggers returning to summary posts in RSS because they’ll want to drive readers to their sites and ads. Summaries v. full posts in RSS has been debated at length. Where some argue that design is secondary to the text and want the full post, others argue that the text is meant to be read in the context of the site and RSS is good for headlines, blurbs, links. NY Times and BBC News continue to offer summary posts, as noted by Dave Winer in his response to a comment from Calcanis on RSS ads. Winer also notes that, “RSS itself is an advertising medium,” because its driving readers to the site where the ads are.
I haven’t seen this yet, but a visual, interstitial ad between the “read more” in your RSS and web page maybe coming.
- Adsense for Feeds, say what?
- Why adsense for feeds is a bad idea (at least for now)
- Ads in RSS feeds? Corrupting the idea of information syndication
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
The problem is that we thought what worked for HTML is gonna work for RSS. It’s not that simple. Ads in feeds can work, but you have to be creative and figure out how.
Agreed. Any suggestions? Interstitial between the rss and site?
Ping me. We’ve got some really cool stuff cooking up here …
Whatever you’re cooking up, we need to see it at the next BBS 05. You coming?
RSS is a new medium. It requires new thinking. Our consumption habits are different. Google (Overture) did a great job inventing the ad unit for search. Pumping the same ads into feeds is proving not to work. Revolutionary change demands new technology, expertise and fresh thinking. We’ve been studying this space for about 2 years and recently published best practices: http://www.pheedo.info/archives/000256.html. We have repeat advertisers so I know it can work. Our publishers are happy too. It’s all about the execusion.
Excellent post Bill. Thanks. It’s definitely a topic to be discussed. I’m not anti rss ads at all, but not so much the way weblogs inc is doing it.
Leave a Comment