RSS Advertising is Here, Whether You Like it Or Not

The internet has been flooded for the past few days with news and debates concerning advertising in RSS feeds, especially in consequence to Google testing AdSense ads in RSS feeds.

Especially Dave Winer has stood up against RSS advertising, asking publishers to reconsider:

"Advertising in RSS is just starting now, for all practical purposes. If we wanted to, as an industry, reject the idea, we could, by asking the people who create the software to add a feature that strips out all ads. Make it default to on. Then, that would force the advertisers, if they want to speak to us, to do so respectfully, by our choice. Create feeds of commercial information that we might be interested in, and if we are, we'll subscribe. If not, we won't."

With all due respect to Dave, I certainly cannot agree with him, neither as a marketer, publisher or RSS end-user.

a] The Marketer Perspective
RSS is a content delivery channel, and us marketers have the tendancy to use every such channel to do what we are doing: market. As a marketer I can understand those not wanting to be marketed at any more, but no marketer can overlook the marketing perspective of RSS advertising. It's targeted, it can be highly relevant and it reaches forward-thinking individuals that have actually opted-in to hear from a specific publisher.

As a marketer I do not want to abuse that trust, but build on it and provide subscribers with relevant advertising, which completes and adds to the reading experience, not take away from it.

b] The Publisher Perspective
Publishers are not in the content business exclusively to provide a service to the "community", but in order to generate revenues.

The publishing business is more and more becoming a win-win-win situation for all parties involved. End-users want free content, which can, on the long-term, only be provided if there is some compensation involved for the publisher. RSS advertising makes this possible, helping publishers generate additional revenues and thus also provide better and more high-quality and high-frequency content.

Let us not forget that creating and providing content costs money and time, and only publishers that make money from this will survive on the long-term.

c] The End-User Perspective
First, as an end-user I want to receive high-quality free content (to a certain extent, of course), which is only possible if the publisher makes enough money to cover the editorial and publishing expenses for producing such high quality content, and is of course rewarded for his great work with greater profitability.

And second, again as an end-user, I want to have as much content as possible available via RSS feeds.

Well, both of these points require advertising. It seems that the nay-sayers against RSS advertising are also forgeting that ads in feeds mean greater inscentive for the publishers to finally provide RSS feeds. Consequently, RSS advertising will actually create growth in the number of RSS feeds, due to publishers wanting to get their peice of the action.

And as far as purely tactical aspects of RSS advertising go, the Silicon Valley Watcher has a great response to Dave's post:

"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?"

You may disslike advertising, but no matter what you say, it's here to stay. End-users want free content; publishers want to make money from the content they publish; and advertisers want to reach people through quality content.

No matter what your personal feelings are, this really is a win-win-win situation for most involved.

To finish this off, here's the latest article on RSS advertising from ClickZ, presenting a good case on RSS advertising for advertisers.

"From a marketing strategy standpoint, RSS's ascendancy is just another indication the world always seems to find a way to route around advertising whenever it has a chance. Consumers crave control over their media and are flocking to technologies that provide that control.

RSS advertising is probably an excellent idea. But we can't forget if we abuse the channel into consumers' browsers, they can do what they've always done with TV: switch the channel. When considering new ways to reach consumers, we can't ignore the fact that while we weren't looking, they seized control."

Read the above paragraph again, as in it hides a key to why Dave actually might not object to RSS advertising if he explored the idea further.

If RSS publishers and advertisers abuse the channel, the end-user can always "switch".

This consequently presents a new high-relevancy factor in to the world of RSS advertising. Given the quick subscribe/unsubscribe nature of RSS, advertising will need to become more relevant and less obtrusive, or not be seen at all.

Don't worry, the users will choose. And once publishers start crossing the line, they will be quickly reminded of their mistake.

Rok Hrastnik
MarketingStudies.net
Author of Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS