RSS Feeds Becoming Hot Real Estate For Online Ads

As more people use Web-syndication technology to collect far-flung Web content in one place, Internet advertisers are beginning to capitalize on the phenomenon. Most top-tier publishers and blogs now offer content feeds through Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or other feed technologies. Users with feed readers or aggregators can organize their favorite news and blog headlines to arrive in a single place rather than visit each site individually. Increased use of syndication could radically change Web-browsing habits, causing fewer readers to visit sites directly, according to industry analysts and executives. The impact could be especially great as RSS expands to audio and video and feeds are available through mobile and other devices. "Media is shifting from a publisher-centric model to a user-centric model, where a user picks the content from a lot of sources," said Christopher Alden, a founder of Red Herring magazine and CEO of Rojo Networks, a San Francisco-based maker of an RSS reader. While ad models are still being hashed out, The New York Times is plowing ahead with RSS advertising, recently inking its first RSS ad deal to run Sun Microsystems text listings for its quarterly developer Webcast in NYTimes.com's technology and business feeds. "Our tech audience is rather elusive, and we need to find additional ways to reach out to them," said Brandon Starkoff, associate director at Starcom in Chicago, Sun's media agency. More advertisers are likely to follow the same path in the hunt for distracted consumers. In a poll released by Forrester Research last month, 57 percent of online advertisers expressed interest in RSS advertising. Google, Yahoo!, Kanoodle and RSS ad networks like Pheedo have begun inserting targeted text ads in syndication feeds, offering advertisers the chance to build RSS campaigns with reach. "RSS is the next wave of real estate the network builders are going to go after," said David Roth, director of search marketing at Isobar's Carat Interactive in San Francisco. That real estate is expanding. According to a Pew Research survey released in January, more than 5 percent U.S. Internet users already use RSS. Feedster, an RSS search engine, now carries more than 8.2 million feeds, compared with less than a million in November. More consumers will adopt syndication once it gets easier to use, said Charlene Li, a Forrester analyst. Yahoo! has led the way, adding feeds to its customizable My Yahoo! pages, which attracted 26 million users in April, per ComScore. Google took steps to follow suit with the introduction of its customizable home page. "From here on, it's about improving the tools so mere mortals are comfortable with them," said Scott Rafer, CEO and president of Feedster. Early RSS advertisers report successes. Sun executives said one-third of participants in a recent online event who came through advertising arrived from RSS ads. In its new $25 million online ad campaign, Sun is running RSS ads through Feedster as well as the NYTimes.com placement. Citrix Online, another advertiser that has dabbled in RSS advertising via Pheedo, saw the ads outperform banner placements on a cost-per-acquisition basis. "It's very promising, because the volume is growing rapidly," said Cailin Pitcher, senior marketing manager at Citrix. The bigger opportunity in RSS advertising, said Rojo's Alden, lies in so-called "endemic advertising," where a marketer creates its own contextually relevant feed that a user can choose to receive along with editorial feeds. For instance, a consumer adding food-related feeds could be offered a feed of recipe tips from a food manufacturer. "You can generate successful experiences that will ultimately translate into transactions," Alden said.

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RSS Feeds Becoming Hot Real Estate For Online Ads

Brian Morrissey

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