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Google Ads for RSS Feeds Goes Beta

Posted by Zonk on from the my-suggestion-for-next-feature-root-beer-floats dept.

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."

4 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Extensions quickly please! by oneandoneis2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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. . .

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    So.. it has come to this
  2. Dont know but... by Virtual+Karma · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is what i really didnt want. As a content provider its great.. but unfortunately this time I'm both the content aggregator and content publisher. My site Newster.net aggregates news from RSS feeds and displays one news every 15 minutes. I'm sure in the coming weeks the news providers will have Ads in their RSS feeds (some already have and I had to remove them from my list to aggregate). So imagine if I use the Google Ads too. The end user will end up seeing the news headlines, the orignal news provider's ads, and my ads. Then to read the whole story they will visit the orignal site and again see tons of Ads.

    My point is to just read a news story Joe Sixpack will have to find his way through tons of Ads.

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    fuvoo: watch something
  3. How does this work by slim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  4. And so the struggle continues by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Advertising on the Web (as much as I personally hate it) is a complicated thing. It does support web sites that allow their owners to continue providing good content in a timely manner. As a reader of sites, I appreciate this bargain. Of course I ignore the ads. That's a problem, so the advertisers got more aggressive to get my attention. So I blocked their ads because they were too intrusive.

    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.