RSS advertising hots up - Slashdot in on the action; is there something wrong with RSS ads?

By - April 28, 2005

By Richard MacManus for SiliconValleyWatcher

Slashdot, the hugely popular "News for Nerds" website, has also recently started putting adverts in its RSS feed. Joseph Scott investigated and found that the ads are being served by the Feedster Media Network, which is a partnership between RSS Search engine Feedster and AdBrite.

In a comment on Joseph's blog, Mike Rowehl noted that he's been "running the technical part of the RSS ads implementation at Feedster". Mike explained that "we actually have a slot to place an ad every couple of stories" in the Slashdot RSS feed. Mike writes more about FeedsterMedia on his own blog.

What's wrong with RSS adverts?

Dave Winer has posted a passionate plea for RSS users to "reject the idea" of advertising in RSS feeds. He wants RSS reader developers to "add a feature that strips out all ads," something that Charlie Woods has been actively toying with in his spare time (he works at Newsgator).

While there are already ways to hide advertising in RSS, this is only ever going to be a geek's way of dealing with the issue. Normal people won't go to such lengths.

Is there anything essentially wrong with adverts in RSS feeds? In response to Dave Winer's post, I asked three questions in the comments thread:

1) Which is better: an excerpted RSS feed (where you have to click through to read the whole post), or a full-text RSS feed with some ads?

Personally I'd prefer the latter.

2) Really, what is the difference between advertising in an RSS feed and advertising on a webpage? RSS is becoming the new HTML - why fight it?

3) What's wrong with publishers/writers/bloggers wanting to get paid for their work, just as software developers want to get paid for their work?

What's your opinion? Feel free to leave a comment here.

Subscribe in a reader

Comments (3)

Kingsley Idehen:

This problem is resolved by RSS readers (native or web UI based) incorporating support for stylesheet association. As indicated in my recent post on this subject: XML and Obtrusive content is oxymoronic. An RSS reader user should have the ability to decided if they want to see ads or not. Likewise, a content provider should retain the freedom to incorporate ads into their content. It's not an industry call to arms affair in any shape or form. I would describe this as a "get to understand the XML realm in more depth", affair.

Posted: April 29, 2005 8:47 AM

Robin Good:

Unless everyone gets it very clear that RSS is the best expression of individual-centered, pull-media, where the end user is the one deciding what is thrown into his consumption channels, advertisers and easy-make-money online publishers will keep thinking that RSS is another great channel to exploit for monetizing interruptive ads.

Once that is understood and appreciated in all of its implications you can easily see why ads have no place inside a medium where the end user is driving.

In a content universe where I can increasingly select what I want and get it the moment I want it, why would I ever want to be spammed with ads when I can have a whole set of feeds dedicated to them (with no content interruptions in between)?

Posted: April 29, 2005 2:52 PM

Richard MacManus:

Robin, who they hell wants to subscribe to an RSS feed 100% dedicated to advertising? I just don't get that argument. It's like me deciding one of my favourite TV shows is the George Foreman BBQ Grill show, every Monday at 2am.

I agree that the end-user is driving their RSS feeds, of course that is true and nobody wants to change that. But my main point is that RSS is pretty much analogous to HTML these days - it delivers content to people who want to read it. The end user doesn't get to "select" no advertising on a webpage, so why is an RSS feed any different. The Content Producer gets to choose what to put inside his/her RSS feed, just as they get to choose what to put on their webpage.

So to put it mildly, I think it's bunk to suggest that advertising has no place in RSS feeds because some end users think RSS feeds are sacred and fundamentally different from an HTML webpage.

As a Content Producer, it's my webpage / RSS feed and so it's *my choice* what goes inside of those things. It's the end-user's choice whether to read the webpage or RSS feed. But the end-user has no control over my webpages/feeds, other than choosing whether to read them or not.

Posted: April 29, 2005 3:22 PM