From the marketer point of view, RSS is a content delivery channel that’s very targeted and can be highly relevant. A great benefit is that we can reach an audience that has voluntarily opted-in to receive a generated feed from a publisher. The message in that feed is of a certain origin to which we can easily adjust a well scaled model of an automated ad delivery. Thus reaching 100 percent of the targeted consumer, because of the 100 percent delivery rate.
With one-click unsubscribe, the consumer has complete control over the delivery of the feed. Great care must be taken in delivering advertisement through RSS feeds, not only to prevent sudden depths in the subrscription rates, but also because content aggregators display the content of your message or ad differently. You really need to understand how everything works to make sure your ad reaches the right target consumer and is displayed correctly, or at least in the right context.
Rok Hrastnik :
“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.”
From Clickz:
‘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.”
Rok Hrastnik :
“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.”
Pamela Parker in a sit-down with FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo :
“How RSS ads should best be targeted was something else Feedburner considered in its testing. It found readers psychologically associated an ad with the individual post in which it appeared. On a site, the ad is usually considered part of the site as a whole.”
“On RSS, Dick said, “people are paying much closer attention to the relevance of this particular ad to this specific post.” He added Feedburner reached this conclusion by listening to publisher feedback.”
This is a big challenge for many current contextual targeting technologies. Posts are often too short to provide enough information about the proper context. One answer may be to use the overall site content, rather than individual post content, as a basis for targeting.
“In its testing, Feedburner got a hint of the creative difficulties ahead for RSS advertising. Dick notes that when the company began doing trials last October, it tracked over 800 different feed aggregators. That number has grown to 1,800, including mobile aggregators, podcast-specific clients and readers used only in certain parts of the world.”
“In such an environment, how do you move beyond text-only ads and ensure your ad is displayed as you intend? Sure, you can design different creative for different clients, but can you imagine 1,800 different creative executions?”
“If RSS popularity continues to increase, and it becomes less and less a vehicle for driving site traffic but more and more its own content-viewing medium, that presents an interesting situation to publishers.”
Thoughts and examples on Dave Taylor’s blog
Read Sean Carton’s article on Clickz
Read Pamela Parker’s article on Clickz
Read Rok Hrastnik’s post on MarketingStudies
Read the article on Wired
Read the article on LockerGnome
Other sources :
Kottke
Pheedo
Wikipedia on RSS Protocols