Slashdot Mirror
Google Ads for RSS Feeds Goes Beta
flood6 writes "Google has launched their service to offer contextual ads via their AdSense program through RSS feeds. The program is currently in Beta but will allow webmasters who offer RSS feeds of their content to include ads in the feeds (which often appear on other websites or through aggregators); someone clicks on the ad, the owner of the feed makes a little scratch."
If they're going to start contaminating my Live Bookmarks with bloody adverts, I hope it won't be long before Adblock can cover RSS feeds as well as web pages. . .
So.. it has come to this
My point is to just read a news story Joe Sixpack will have to find his way through tons of Ads.
fuvoo: watch something
A cursory browse through the links in the article, and a couple of clicks beyond, does not explain to me how this works.
In the standard Adsense service, one puts a snippet of Javascript in one's pages, which the browser runs to fetch ads. The ads are targetted using what Google knows about the referrer URL, and the browser's IP address.
I don't believe many RSS aggregators will do anything with embedded Javascript in an RSS feed, so how does Google add ads to a feed? Does this only work on feeds hosted by Google?
What I meant to say was that, YES FINALLY people who host news sites can make money off of RSS, so they will have a _legitimate_ reason to put up a RSS feed. This could be what makes RSS really, really widespread. It's great to see google backing this.
I think we need to face the fact that Google now exists primarily to sell ads.
Is this not how it's always been? The primary reason for a company to exist is to make money. Google makes all it's money through ads, so obviously Google's primary objective is to sell ad space. Ad space is more valuable if more people see it, so if google continue to provide an excellent service then they will attract more people and make more money from the ads - everyone wins.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Now some sites become so weighed down by ads it's painful to look at the sites to try to read an article. Lots of "Next >>" links and blocks of flashy color in the middle of an article. Aaargh! Ah, so we escalate the battle by using the RSS feeds instead. Bliss! Just the news and nothing but the news!
Escalation part deaux: They provide ads in the RSS feeds. Aaargh! We block the ads. They hire hit men to kill us -- ok, maybe we haven't reached that stage yet. But man, I sure get tired of this war of advertising. You'd think they'd catch on that those of us running screaming the other way from ads might not be the best audience for said ads. But no, they think that if they force feed their ads to us, Clockwork Orange style, we'll actually buy their hated products!
And given the consumer bent of most people, they are sadly probably right.
And for those webmasters who use advertising to survive, may the Force be with you. I understand the bargain you make, and I will still read your sites, and if you find a particularly clever and targeted ad, why I might even view it. It's a complicated issue.
Somebody's not really familiar with Google's definition of "Beta," I take it?
It's news, because it will almost certainly affect people in the near future, because ads will start showing up in their RSS feeds. There weren't ads in RSS feeds before. See? News!
This is news, how? ... Help me Jebus, this Google fixation has gone too far.
Probably because a good percentage of the Slashdot community runs blogs/technology sites/whatever, and Adsense is one of the only small-player partners, giving them a minute amount of payback to help offset hosting fees and hassles. This isn't about an advertisement technique for use on CNN.com, but rather on "Joe's Kernel Rants", and thus it is apropos.
First of all, I wasn't the original poster, and I don't think making money through advertising is evil. The fact that they are an advertising company does not make them evil. No more then I think a gun company is evil for selling guns. People want a product, a company provides a solution, thats fine. Its the specific intent of the product they design that makes it "evil". I don't see people like you defending DoubleClick...maybe doubleclick "suggests" that popup ads be used discretely and sparingly, but that doesn't keep people from flooding your browser with them. Google's "do no evil" mission statement has always revolved around making products that do not make the users of Google advertisements mad. But this, and other recent ideas have gotten further and further away from that.
Furthermore, I don't understand why your responding to every negative post on this topic and defending Google...I can only guess that you must have a vested interest in Google or are a Google employee. If thats the case, why don't you just say so?