Google Ends An Era Of Ad-free RSS

Mountain View (CA) - A new service offered by Google enables publishers to inject contextual text or image ads into individual feeds distributed by FeedBurner, the world’s largest RSS distribution service that was acquired by Google more than two years ago. Content creators will certainly welcome this new revenue source, but RSS subscribers have to realize that the era of ad-free feeds is coming to an end.

RSS news have become a convenient tool to keep yourself up to date with practically any kind of online content through a simple feed of headlines, summaries or full articles and in some cases even images and multimedia content. The vast majority of publishers syndicate feeds that users can subscribe to, but RSS feeds have almost entirely been a traffic generation tool and advertising has been largely excluded from RSS. This is likely to change as feed advertising becomes generally available through Google’s AdSense.

It took Google more than two years to figure out the best way to incorporate keyword-based textual ads into feeds. The capability was available to a small, hand-picked group of publishers since May in beta phase and is now available in a final version to anyone. The capability is accessible through a new "AdSense for feeds" option available in the Setup tab of the AdSense account. Detailed statistics about feed audience, distribution, and more can be accessed through the options through a publisher’s FeedBurner account.

Once AdSense is set up for use with feeds, publishers can create a new ad unit with a choice of image ads, options of ad frequency, position, sizes and colors.

"Because feeds can get distributed to a wide array of devices, AdSense for feeds automatically chooses the best size for ads depending on the content, the device in which the feed is being displayed, and other factors," Google said. "Generally, the 300x250 size will display when there’s more content and when your feed is being viewed in a device with a larger display."

The search giant said that its sales force will sell cost-per-impression (CPM) ads directly to the largest advertisers, while the rest of publishers advertising inventory will be filled with contextually targeted cost-per-click (CPC) and CPM ads. "This means that more of your feed items will be sold and with higher overall revenue, than with any other feed network. As with web pages, advertising revenue is generated only when feed subscribers select ad-enabled feed post and display its content.

FeedBurner distributes almost two million feeds coming from more than a million publishers. The service also distributes close to 300,000 videocast and podcast feeds. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, FeedBurner FeedBurner recently closed its ad network called FAN, claiming "the new AdSense for Feeds product" that "will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential." In a related note, Google said it will also retire its AdSense referral program at the end of August.