Feeds Archive

Last week we were switched from FeedBurner’s ad and feed delivery system to the new, more robust Google servers and the AdSense ad program.

I’ve always been loyal to FeedBurner, even capitalizing the B when most don’t. Yet, as I predicted, the move to Google’s ad program has been very disappointing. I can only hope that the program will get better over time. Immediately after Google acquired FeedBurner I was nervous that FeedBurner would ditch their awesome advertising network for Google’s low paying, text ad AdSense program. Sadly I was right.

Here are some of my additional thoughts in video:

Adam Ostrow wonders what type of ad matching Google is doing based on the ads that he has seen in the Mashable feed.

We have been relatively successful in selling our own RSS ads. Perhaps there is room for a new RSS ad player to take the slot that FeedBurner’s ad program occupied. We are testing the Pheedo feed advertising service and I will provide a side-by-side comparison in about a month.

I’ve written several times about my thoughts on FeedBurner dropping their awesome, high-paying RSS feed ad network for the Google AdSense program. Nik noted last weekend that FeedBurner is moving feeds over to Google hosting (we were moved today) and that now feeds will use Google’s strong server farms to handle feed processing.

Tonight we were also added to the Google AdSense program for RSS feeds. Setting up ads in the feed is simple – same process as setting up an ad unit in the traditional AdSense program.

The options are:

• Name – the feed name
• Size – this is automatically set by Google
• Ad Type – text, text/image or image only
• Frequency – how often do you want ads to appear – I’ve selected every 3rd item
• Post length – how long of a post do you want ads to appear in
• Position – where in the feed do you want the ads to appear – options are bottom or top
• Channels – same channel system as with the traditional Google AdSense program

While I won’t be able to share many details on how the system performs, I will share as much as I can and also compare it to the other feed advertising programs I’ve tested. I still believe that my feed for a buck proposal is the best way to go.

Swiss-based Dixero has announced that they have raised a new round of funding in the amount of 1.5 million Euros. This brings their total funding to 3 million Euros. Last week Dixero announced the opening of an office in Silicon Valley.

Dixero provides a way to take RSS feeds and convert them to audio so that you can listen to your favorite feeds instead of reading them in a "traditional" sense. Dixero offers three "audio personalities", Lois, Luke and Claire so that you can vary the voice that you hear for different feeds. It can help with differentiation from one feed to the next.

We’ve also reviewed BlogBard and PimpMyNews – two other feed-to-audio services. The key to these services is to make the voice as close to human as possible.

Here’s an example of the Dixero audio conversion – it sounds "computerized" (it looks like you need some sort of xml plugin – IE is asking me to install something for this to play):

Here’s the 20-second pitch Dixero provided earlier this month in Zurich:

Feed discovery service Toluu has rolled out a minor update that is geared towards helping users decide if a suggested feed is something they might be interested in before visiting the actual Web site. I’ve embedded a screenshot below of the new functionality. When you put your mouse over the name of a blog anywhere inside the Toluu application, you see the latest five posts from that blog. This can help you determine if it’s a blog that you would like to visit and/or subscribe to.

Could Toluu slowly create a custom version of popURLs and Alltop start page? They know what you like and what your friend’s like in terms of feeds, could they offer up the right content in a mix? And what about aggregating "like content" together?

Check out our full review of the Toluu service.

Pheedo provides advertising for RSS feeds and today is announcing the launch of the FeedPowered Analytics Dashboard. The dashboard will provide advertisers on the Pheedo ad network the ability to track details on where their ads were served and to whom. The concept is to help advertisers increase the ROI on their feed ad campaigns.

The FeedPowered Analytics Dashboard includes data and trends on active user analysis, content engagement, advertising stats, social media distribution and RSS subscription page information. There’s also an API so companies can integrate the dashboard into their own analytics packages and also allow developers to leverage on top of.

My only question at this point is how the system handles defaults. Defaults are where some blogs and content sources automatically are provided to subscribers of a service. Are those differentiated in the dashboard?

RSS feed services leader FeedBurner (now part of Google) offers a variety of analytics services as part of their feeds and advertising offerings. FeedBurner announced last month that they will soon offer Google AdSense in feeds powered by FeedBurner. This will open up the analytics offering by FeedBurner because advertisers will be able to track campaigns in AdWords. Pheedo is smart to get their analytics product out now and they will need to keep innovating and adding functionality to attempt to stay ahead of FeedBurner and Google.

Earlier today we reported on the Google announcement that Google AdSense ads will soon be available in FeedBurner feeds. Overall I think this is a good step forward to get us all discussing RSS monetization. I still believe that paying a small amount for a full feed with no ads will be the most popular way by the end of the year. If a person isn’t interested in paying, then they get a partial feed with ads that drives back to the site. With the speed of mobile devices and broadband connections, there’s no reason to not want to visit the content creator’s site.

I am very interested in feedback on the above and your ideas on how RSS will be monetized. This overall discussion could become one of the hot topics later this year.

Here are some of my thoughts on this announcement via video:

Update: I’ve added a video on the topic of RSS monetization and the news below.

A month ago today we wrote that Google AdSense for FeedBurner RSS feeds was coming and today we have learned more details via a blog post on the FeedBurner site. Starting next week, a select group of publishers who are part of the FeedBurner Ad Network (we are part but apparently not in the test group) will begin to push Google AdSense ads out to their feeds.

Eventually the program will open to anyone using Google AdSense and seems to be driven through the AdSense program rather than the FeedBurner program.

FeedBurner suggests that those of us in the Ad Network will continue to run "premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content" — I have watched the number of these premium ads drop like a rock since FeedBurner sold to Google and it was a fear of mine which sadly has been realized.

Maybe after Google AdSense pushes out to the mass, my "buck a feed" concept might actually start to move forward.

Digital Inspiration found some Google ads in feeds a month ago – remember that there’s no JavaScript in a feed so these ads will be run via a HTML imagemap.