Adam Ostrow wrote this weekend on the horrible state of advertising targeting on AdSense for RSS, which as we’ve learned today is the replacement for the FeedBurner Advertiser Network. Allen Stern at CenterNetworks noted exactly how disappointed he has become in this transition from Google’s $100 million folly which is FeedBurner.
As Allen says, cost-per-click advertisements just don’t seem to be that great of a fit for RSS feeds, particularly Google’s AdSense units, the stingiest of all the ad formats. Google, in what’s becoming a trademark fashion, bought up FeedBurner and trashed the company. Instead of loudly gutting and relaunching the company, the primary draw for FeedBurner’s existence was very quietly eulogized on a Google Group posting, as noted by Valleywag today:
This is a quick note to confirm that FeedBurner’s former, independent ad network, FeedBurner Ad Network (aka “FAN”), is officially closed. No new applications for FAN publishers are being accepted and we expect the broad variety of options provided through AdSense (including the new AdSense for Feeds product, powered with FeedBurner feeds) will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential.
The system worked, as many have noted by personal experience, to deliver ads that payed out around a $10 CPM or even higher. Most folks are lucky to have an AdSense account that pays a fraction of that amount, and will be even more hard pressed to find joy there given the poor targeting and traditionally poor placement of ads in a typical RSS post item.
Given how long I’ve utilized AdSense, I have no expectations for its improvement, unlike some of my fellow bloggers. Simply because the strongest reason (their monetization) for keeping FeedBurner no longer exists doesn’t mean it’s time to dump the service as Steven Hodson suggests today. It does make Google particularly weak in this product sector, and leaves them wide open for strong competition. Steven outlines the reasons:
When you consider the following
- Google closes down the FeedBurner Advertising Network
- The FeedBurner site metrics don’t even come close to jiving with other services including Google’s own site metrics service
- FeedBurner subscriber counts are not consistent or can be gamed
So tell me why are we still using this service?
The only purpose at this point in keeping FeedBurner around it portability and compatibility of data. Having a system that can read all the various flavors and manglings of RSS and Atom out there in the world and then serve it back up in an appropriate manner almost flawlessly is still a rare thing. I can’t think of another competitor to FeedBurner, in fact, that does this.
More importantly, FeedBurner accounts serve as a nice shield from the often transitory nature of Web 2.0 products. Any time I generate a feed I want to expose to the public, I don’t care if it’s hosted by Google themselves, I run it through FeedBurner, because I know if the original feed goes away, I can instantly re-point the feed the public subscribes to towards another source. I don’t have to lose subscribers.
This, though, is a relatively easy thing to code and get running. What isn’t easy is building a business around monetizing RSS. The first company to come up with the silver bullet in that department has only a few small hoops to jump, and they’ll be able to slay the mighty Google.
In the meantime, I suggest folks roll their own solution. RSS files are a great place for brand advertisements, and both pundits quoted in this article (Steven Hodson and Allen Stern) have cited success in selling their own ads for their feeds.
