RSS and Weblog Ads?

Worried About Blipverts asks: "Last week I signed up for an RSS feed from a small site and saw that ads were being inserted into content. I was somewhat surprised, even though I'd heard companies like FeedBurner and BlogMine are providing such services. I'm mixed on the subject ... on one hand, compensating webloggers financially is a powerful way to demonstrate the power of weblog syndication and publishing. On the other hand, the deluge of contrived content (spam, weblogs about mortgage refinancing, etc) is sure to follow. My question is: Are you in favor of ads inside RSS? If not, will you unsubscribe from your feeds that use them?" While it's only fair for sites to seek some form of income for various reasons, what behavior would you consider "going too far" when it comes to advertisements?

Comments

depends on the feed

[beegle]

I think it depends on the RSS feed.

If the feed provides full article text, I think ads are reasonable. With full articles, I have absolutely no reason to visit the site, so I'm eating bandwidth and giving nothing in return.

If, on the other hand, the RSS feed just has headlines, I think that ads are too much. With a headline-only feed, EVERY message is ALREADY an ad for the full article on the web site, so putting even more ads in is just excessive.

Re:Depends on the feed

[samael]

No, it is my _choice_ to receive it without ads.

I will happily visit websites that have ads around the edges (I reserve adblock for use on blinking flashing things). I occasionally see cool things in Googles adwords. But I will not put up with ads mixed into my content.

Don't disguise ads as content

[Anonymous Coward]

Under any circumstances. Make what's an ad very clear before the user has to click more to read it.

Tricking your readers will cause them to stop being your readers.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, the deluge of contrived content (spam, weblogs about mortgage refinancing, etc) is sure to follow.

Why on earth would you subscribe to a newsfeed about morgage refinancing? You do know how feeds work don't you?

Ads being inserted into legitimate feeds is another matter. If it bugs you, don't subscribe to them, same as not visiting websites that foist annoying ads upon you.

Depends on the feed

[samael]

Personally I'd rather that they provide headlines and then a link to the main text on their site (which would have adverts). Having ads intermingled with my actual content is just a step too invasive for me.

Re:And thus another arms race begins

[pv2b]

I think the pull/push disctinction is kinda irrelevant here. After all, they do have ad filters for televisions now -- and television is probably the most pushy medium you're going to find. (In more than one sense of the word.)

Not to mention that if you had some kind of Pointcast-like kind of system, you could very well write a hacked client which would receive the ads but never display them, and nobody would be any the wiser.

But your main point remains. Today we have the technology to ignore/skip some of the content we're sent. It may not be perfect at all times, but it's there, but at the moment, fighting the filters in an arms race is pretty much what site owners can do.

I myself don't really have any business model lined up for the free-of-charge web sites that are ad-supported at the moment, other than some form of subscription-only based service. Sure, micropayments are here, and are probably not that hard to get working, but the problem remains -- why would anybody use micropayments to get content which they can get elsewhere for free using their ad-stripping proxies?

Personally, I don't use any ad-stripping proxies at all. I like to see exactly what I'm being sent, and sometimes ads can even be vaguely relevant to the information I'm looking for. The real challenge, in other words, is making ads that people *want* to see. Google adwords and similar programs are actually pretty damn close. Fight the reason people block ads, not the ad-blocking itself, before it's too late and everybody runs adblock software already.

Re:It's no problem

[IpalindromeI]

Please explain how text ads do not use any bandwidth. Perhaps the electrons travel through hyperspace instead of cyberspace?

Re:I think it doesn't matter

[daeley]

The same way we have gotten used to ads on websites, the same way we will get used to ads in RSS feeds.

If by "gotten used to" you mean "blocking with extreme prejudice," then yes, I will be "getting used to" RSS adverts as well. :)