Ads in Feeds
I wasn’t going to point to this eWeek article about using RSS to distribute ads initially because it’s nothing new. Check out my aggregator and you’ll see that I already receive ads via RSS. No, I don’t subscribe to feeds for ads; ads are distributed along with the content of some the feeds. Some free services that create or convert feeds, like Atom2RSS, distribute ads to support their free service. (That’s one big reason why I didn’t choose that service when I reworked NewsliBlog’s feed, even though it’s a free service that seems to work well.) I decided I should point to the article just because it’s a topic that frequently surfaces when we talk about the future of feeds.
The article, however, doesn’t give any specifics about how it’s going to work. How is the company going to insert ads in feeds to get them to people’s aggregators? Are people going to have the option of subscribing to a feed of advertisements? Will advertisements be distributed with content? Could a blogger sell space in a feed to an advertiser? How long will it be before programmers develop aggregators that kick out advertisements?
also from beSpacific
