The RSSads Blog

criticism of google feed ads

2005-05-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

Interesting feedback on Google feed ads from the Syndicate conference; apparently Google's offering isn't ready for primetime:

I went to the Google table and had a chat with their representatives about AdSense for feeds, and came off feeling that this product was nowhere near ready. It doesn’t support anything but Blogger and Movable Type. Apparently, the code Google created isn’t any standard code that can just be dumped in; its code specific to the blogging platform, so don’t expect a lot of adoption for a while. Considering that (1) users of Blogger probably don’t need it (2) WordPress is hugely popular (3) most RSS feeds aren’t coming from blogging software, but from company websites that want to keep people updated and (4) no news organization uses blogging software, so they can’t use Google, this is going to be a problem.
The reps told me they reduced the size of the ads to 468 pixels in width, which is an improvement, but still not good enough. In a two or three-pane view, the portion with the blog posts can be quite small. This means the ad can be wider than the window, forcing vertical scrolling. It is very annoying, especially considering these are text ads. Since they are just text, can’t Google find a way that the text wraps? You’d think. While the Google people were knowledgeable and friendly, the product looks far too beta for widespread adoption at this point.

RSSads now taking beta testers

2005-05-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

RSSads is now taking beta testers, if you're interested leave a comment.

google ads in rss

2005-04-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

So according to this Google is testing AdSense in RSS. The integration code from TUAW.com's RSS feed is:

href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/16:7448?pos=0">url=http://www.tuaw.com/2005/04/27/tuaw-rss-feed-gets-google-adsense/&
cuid=16:7448&format=480x46_aff&client=ca-pub-3546992251556849&
hl=en&adsafe=high&color_bg=FFFFFF&color_border=FFFFFF&
color_link=66666&color_text=333333&color_url=337788&
color_line=337788" / />

..Which is cool on one hand because you send over a permalink to the blog post and they give back contextual content; but on the other hand its an image ad only, which seems kind of broken. I'd hate to have to download that image on my sidekick.

feedburner + overture not working

2005-03-05T02:40:00.000-08:00

Hm, doesn't sound like the FeedBurner/Overture combination is doing very well:

Since I'm on the topic of Boing Boing, we've been testing Yahoo's long tail RSS ads. It's tough to find ads that are relevant to Boing Boing's content, and often the program fails - defaulting to pretty random ads. But when this combination hit my RSS aggregator, I had to note it....

This is predictable - keyword search driven ads probably aren't as lucrative as directly placed ads for medium to high traffic websites.

feedster doing rss ads?

2004-08-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently via Kanoodle, at least according to Battelle.

curious

2004-08-10T16:22:00.000-07:00

Its interesting watching the discussion on ads in RSS. Is there something I'm missing - or are Scoble and the other thought leaders trying to push a version of the Fark controversy as the solution:

Simple: we need a new advertising model. Content providers should have a way to get paid for linking to things. Actually, Amazon.com is showing the way here. Its associates program is paying webloggers back for linking to Amazon. That's an effective way to make money (note: I do not use affiliate programs on my blog -- if I link to something I am not getting paid for doing so).

...well it sure looks like it! I'm not sure this will work well. Jason Calcanis and others' reaction to Fark (apparently) selling placement of stories was VERY negative. I think the same reaction would be replicated. I know I wouldn't trust my favorite weblogs (say, Scripting News or Buzzmachine) if I knew that some percentage of their links were there just to trick me into clicking on them. I wouldn't like it if News.com was selling stories to startups either. TELL me what is advertising and what isn't. And give me the whole truth, not spin designed to make me click. Otherwise I would rather just have a feed direct from a seller that I'm interested in (the other way to do RSS ads correctly). End of day: I am skeptical of RSS advertising that isn't clearly marked as such.

conditional GET

2004-07-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

Hopefully in the discussion about RSS scaling issues, everyone can remember that conditional GET is a really useful way to reduce the load.

cost per influence

2004-07-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

Interesting Corante discussion of a "cost per influence" metric for blog advertising. It might be a bit early for this but its certainly an idea worth exploring. One item in there I agree with 100% is that Google AdWords is commoditizing CPC. But remember: people make good money from commodities.

amen

2004-07-12T18:48:00.000-07:00

Steve Gillmor has it right:

there's absolutely no reason why advertising won't work in RSS

...can't argue with that ;)

no download counts

2004-07-05T01:05:00.000-07:00

Jeff Jarvis is correct in comments responding to my last post, pointing out:

Nonetheless, we need to be able to beat down the argument that the RSS aggregator downloaded the feed, say, once an hour and nobody ever saw it. If the gif is displayed, at least it can be said that the reader called it up in the aggregator.

Of course this is true and download counts in RSS are pretty much meaningless since aggregators download RSS files at pre-scheduled intervals. What this means is that RSS ad sales can't effectively use the "page served" model of CPM because unlike the web, every RSS content item is requested by the user.

I'd go a step further and point out that users downloading and caching your website content make ad serving have to necessarily focus on either brand-driven inserts as a currency, or clickthroughs. Page view counting with invisible GIFs is something RSSAds will do, so item views that occur when a user's PC is online can be counted. But for offline aggregators like FeedDemon, a user's laptop can view the content without the user being online. For instance, I bring my laptop with aggregator on planes so I can read websites. Those views can't be counted unless the aggregator saved the views and posted them to the ad server later on. Aggregators might start to provide some data to RSS servers to solve this problem.

Jeff Jarvis on RSS advertising

2004-07-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

Jeff Jarvis makes a lot of interesting points here on advertising in RSS. One thing I would slightly disagree with is that RSS needs a reliable way to count views. Yes this is useful. However I would argue that its almost impossible to TRULY count this. This is because user attention is impossible to count, unless there is a clickthrough or an action. The user could scroll past an RSS item they don't view as interesting, and the aggregator might count that as a view. What I think will work is interesting content coupled with interesting and relevant (for the feed) ads. Metrics are useful but advertisers will ultimately count success in the click-throughs and in their ability to create a connection with the readers of a a feed.

are ads in RSS bad?

2004-07-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dave Winer thinks that ads in RSS aren't interesting. I'd agree, to a point that there is nothing new - but ads in RSS will still be an important revenue stream for content publishers, just as banner ads, google AdWords, etc. have helped finance content users access via the web.

welcome

2004-05-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the RSSAds blog.