Advertising: Coming Soon to a Blog/RSS Feed Near You
Advertising has always been part of our society.
Online it's no different, and the number of ad
options seems to increase daily. The latest target
of advertisers is Blogs/RSS. A Blog is similar to an online journal where daily or
weekly rantings by the publisher are posted. RSS
stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and is a
way to distribute your Blog or Web page updates
via the Internet. Anyone can subscribe to your
RSS feed, which they'll do using a "news reader,"
and be notified of any new updates or postings. This new type of advertising is still growing
and evolving and the majority of ads being served
are not graphical but text-based in nature.
Advertising in Blogs and feeds has a slow
growth area, as Blogs still have not reached the
mainstream, primarily due to the fact that readers
are not yet included within a browser's interface.
In the future, browsers will come with this option
built in. One difficulty with RSS feed advertising is the
number of different software packages (news
readers) available. Instead of one or two
standards, there are hundreds of options to choose
from. As a publisher, you can earn cash by selling
ads on your Blog yourself, or you can use a
third party ad service and run their ads
on your site. So what are some of the benefits to Blog/RSS
advertising? Well, unlike email ads, there is
no problem with filtering/blocking and this
format is 100% opt-in, so delivery of your
messages is assured with no S-p-a-m complaints.
You're also not competing for attention with
hundreds of other messages in an already over
crowded inbox of the end user. Let's take a look at some of the options
and trendsetters in this new advertising arena. 1) Simple Ad Feed Management & Server:
http://pheedo.com/publishers/ Service that allows you to place ads into your
RSS or Atom feeds. Easy to use turnkey system,
they have a large pool of advertisers or you
can send your own advertisers to sign up thru
their site. All ad activity is trackable and
reports can be generated showing click thrus
and ad views. 2) TypePad: http://www.TypePad.com An online Blogging service starting out at
only 4.95 a month. Typedpad has recently
partnered with Kanoodle to integrate their
contextual ads into their Blogs. This is an
add on option for users and is not mandatory
or forced on subscribers. 3) Blogger: http://Blogger.com Owned by Google, this free online Blog service
allows its users to sign up for their AdSense
Program. By displaying their contextual ads
on your Blog, you'll be paid for every click
thru. For more on Adsense see
http://www.tinyurl.com/4uakh 4) Overture: http://Overture.com Overture has partnered with Feedburner.com
to deliver ads into several feeds, including
mobiletracker.net. Overture's
contextual ad technology is relying on
Feedburner's processing expertise for help
in delivering the ads. 5) Feedster: http://www.FeedSter.com Feedster has started placing sponsored links in
their feeds and recently started offering
Kanoodle's context ads. Users of Feedster who
want "ad free feeds" will have to pay an
annual fee. 6) MoreOver: http://MoreOver.com Moreover can deliver ads thru RSS, but the
publishers don't make the money; Moreover
does. To see a listing of their free RSS
news feeds, go to http://Moreover.com/RSS They also offer free "ad supported feeds"
that non-commercial websites can display
on their websites. For more see
http://FeedDirect.com 7) SimpleAds.net: http://www.SimpleAds.net A free ad network for Bloggers to promote
their Blogs via other users Blogs. You can
create your own ad that is rotated across
their ad network. 8) BurstMedia.com : http://BurstMedia.com BurstMedia recently launched their own Blog
advertising service. Currently they have over
22 Blogs in their network that all together
generate over 9 million pageviews a month.
Advertisers can choose to target by location
or content. Anytime you see the Net's "Big Boys" involved
in a new technology, you can bet there's money
to be made. Blogging and RSS feeds advertising
is indeed the wave of the future, so if you don't
want to be left behind, catch a ride while
there's still room on this trendsetter train.
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