Should There Be Advertisements In Blog Feeds?

Advertising via feed articles is a reality. Services now exist that will allow blog authors to publish advertisements in their blog feeds. If you're a blog author, should you jump on the bandwagon and publish them in your own feeds? If you're a feed subscriber, would something like this cause you to unsubscribe?

If a blog's feed is set up with FeedBurner and the blog meets their conditions, the blog author will be presented with an opportunity to join the "FeedBurner Ad Network" (FAN). Their advertisements are placed at the tail end of each feed article.

The Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is still in beta status but is accepting applications. With their service, blog authors can not only replace or augment Google AdSense advertisements, they can have feed advertisements as well.

Blog authors can also include advertisements from text and image-driven sources (not JavaScript) by using a plugin such as the Feed Footer WordPress Plugin from Blog Clout. They can even create their own custom advertisements with it.

On the positive side of things, another potential source of income is opened up. On the negative side, the people subscribed to the feed may not like seeing the advertisements and unsubscribe.

I have applied to both the FAN and the YPN. I applied to the FAN to see how it works. Whether I decide to actually display advertisements through them is another story. With the YPN, I intend to offer an alternative to Google advertisements. In fact, I'm writing some code so that ads from Google appear on odd days while ads from Yahoo appear on even days. Of course, I won't be using the YPN unless I'm accepted.

Now it's your turn to talk.

As a blog author, would displaying advertisements in your feed articles be something you'd be willing to do? Do you think doing so would cause you to lose subscribers? If you do think you'll lose subscribers, do you think it will be temporary or permanent?

As a feed subscriber, how obtrusive would the advertising have to be in order for you to make the decision to unsubscribe?

August 4th, 2007 By RT Cunningham | Categories: Advertising | Tags: feeds, RSS |

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B. Durant on August 4th, 2007 at 4:20 pm (Reply)

As you said feedvertising is now a reality and no matter what it will be there. That points moot. As far as using it in my own feeds - if I had a decent number of subscribers I would consider it but on a limited basis. Wouldn't want it popping up every listing, but maybe once every 5-8 wouldn't be so intrusive.

As a reader of multiple blogs I've never once seen a feed with an ad in it. Not sure if I've just been lucky, or if the Firefox live bookmark doesn't display it?

RT Cunningham on August 4th, 2007 at 4:24 pm (Reply)

I read hundreds of blogs through Google Reader and I haven't noticed any yet. But then again, I'm not subscribed to blogs with hundreds of feed subscribers.

Thomas on August 4th, 2007 at 5:16 pm (Reply)

My number of feed subscribers have been growing steadily so I have been thinking about this too.

Will follow this discussion with interest.

mq on August 4th, 2007 at 6:54 pm (Reply)

For now I rather not put the advert in my blog feed because I think most of the subscribers wouldn't want to see other things apart from the content, otherwise they can always visit my blog without subscribing to the feed.

For me maintaining the stream of readers are more important. Maybe if one day I become one of the famous bloggers with thousands of readers, I would take the chance and risk losing some subscribers.

RT Cunningham on August 4th, 2007 at 6:57 pm (Reply)

Heh… very few bloggers have a thousand or more subscribers. I would venture to say less than 50.

Kevin on August 5th, 2007 at 12:03 am (Reply)

I have been wrestling with this idea for awhile now. I have a healthy number of subscribers via feed, a lot of them just read my blog via feed and don't visit the site all that often.

So I am losing out on their traffic numbers, so maybe I should throw some ads in the feed?

On the flip side I don't want to alienate people who get my feed and feel like I am a total shill.

RT Cunningham on August 5th, 2007 at 12:09 am (Reply)

I don't have a lot of feed subscribers yet (157 is displayed) but I think I would prefer to start doing it now before I get a lot of subscribers and then lose the ones that don't like it.

You have to think of it this way. You're making nothing from your feed right now. You're not even getting credit for traffic to your blog. What can it hurt, as long as you're up front about it?

Chris on August 5th, 2007 at 1:36 am (Reply)

I'm a Text Link Ads publisher, and they also allow feedvertising. I haven't sold any slots yet, but you can also use them for your own ads, so I use them to cross-promote my blogs, and also gave one away in a competition.

The good thing about them is that they are show in rotation, one at a time, even the blanks. This means that if I have 3 ads to show, I can setup 6 slots which means that only 50% of my posts will contain an ad or message.

Subscribe to my feed and you'll see what I mean

RT Cunningham on August 5th, 2007 at 1:42 am (Reply)

I already subscribe to your feed, Chris. Yeah, I didn't remember about the feedvertising until this evening. I just signed up for TLA (but not the feedvertising) this morning.

AgentSully on August 5th, 2007 at 4:17 am (Reply)

I've seen feeds with them such as dumblittleman.com and it certainly doesn't bother me. He's got 70,000+ subscribers so it must not bother them!

I'm a very functional person and so it is hard for me to understand why people would object to ads.

As long as it is not some Vegas-like flashing amadon of an ad, will it really hurt that much?

I'd like to add it soon. Let us know how it goes, RT!!

Mike on August 5th, 2007 at 9:32 am (Reply)

Like Chris, I use TLA feedvertising as it's dead easy to integrate. I'm not sure I've focused on this as much as I could/should but that's probably because I'm not convinced that people will respond to ads in feeds.

Personally I'm of the opinion that dropping affiliate links into anchor text within the body of your post is a better way of working.

Stephen Cronin on August 6th, 2007 at 4:49 pm (Reply)

As a subscriber, I'm against ads. I get a lot of feed entries coming my way (maybe 500 a day). I skim through them to find the ones I want to read, then I go to the website.

I don't mind ads once I get to the website, but I don't want them in my way while I'm skimming. I just want the extract about the post's topics, not the full post, not graphics, not ads.

So as a blog author, I guess I better not add them - not that I've got many subscribers yet anyway.

RT Cunningham on August 6th, 2007 at 4:54 pm (Reply)

Hi Stephen,

I appreciate your point of view. I think if feed advertising is done the right way (at the end of a feed post and not intrusive), it can be safely ignored.

The full feed versus excerpt feed is always debatable. I think blog authors should provide the full feed and the blog readers should be able to choose whether they want full or excerpts. I don't know of any feed readers that make that an option though.
2. Stephen Cronin on August 6th, 2007 at 9:39 pm (Reply)
  
  Hi RT,
  
  I'll concede I do some strange things with feeds (convert them to RTF for viewing on my old PPC - long story, don't ask why), so ads irritate me more than most. For most people an ad at the end of the feed post would be fine.
  
  Also, if you have your full post there, I guess you need the advertising or you are missing out, as many people won't go to your website, they'll just read the feed.
  
  With offline readers such as Thunderbird, you can choose to just download the excerpt or the whole page, but that relies on WordPress spitting one out. If you have the full post in the feed, then the full post IS the excerpt. The whole page is the full page (exactly as if you opened in a browser).
  
  I agree it would be great if the readers could cut it off after so many character, or even better, if WordPress could provide two feeds - a full feed and an excerpt one. I may see if there's a plugin in this if I have time (not soon).
  
  Personally, I always use the more tag in my posts. That way I don't show the whole post on my front page, which leads to duplicate content (bad SEO). I say this a little humbly because your PageRank is much higher than my paltry 0! But that's what I heard anyway.
3. RT Cunningham on August 6th, 2007 at 9:44 pm (Reply)
  
  Having two separates feeds is a good idea! The advertising could go on the one with the full feed and one with the partial wouldn't have it. I don't see why the WordPress RSS feeds couldn't be hacked into something like that. I'll have to check into it.
  2. Stephen Cronin on August 10th, 2007 at 2:31 pm (Reply)
4. RT Cunningham on August 6th, 2007 at 9:51 pm (Reply)
  
  I look at the index page as something like the front page of a newspaper except that it's only good for a limited time as the articles scroll off. I don't want to force an extra click to see the whole thing. The readers get enough of that by going through the older posts.
  
  I tried using the "more" tag for a short period and while it generated more page views, it didn't generate more readers. I think it's okay to use it, but if you ever change to displaying the whole article, you shouldn't change back. That road leads to confusion.
  2. Stephen Cronin on August 6th, 2007 at 11:55 pm (Reply)
    
    Okay, thanks for explaining. And I should have made it clear that the reason I mentioned the more tag is that, of course, it chops my posts in the feed as well as the front page (I didn't say that clearly).
    
    By the way, I subscribed to your feed to check out full vs excerpt - and I'm not unsubscribing. I keep picking your posts out of the Bumpzee feed, so I may as well get it directly. Good stuff!
  3. RT Cunningham on August 7th, 2007 at 12:05 am (Reply)
    
    I've been using the http://cavemonkey50.com/code/full-feed/ plugin for so long I forgot the more tag causes the feed to follow suit.

Maurice (TheCaymanHost) on August 10th, 2007 at 12:13 pm (Reply)

I've been experimenting with the FeedFooter plugin on one of my WP Blogs and although the subscriber base is very small I haven't noticed any sudden reduction in numbers.

I publish a full feed and place an unobtrusive creative at the foot of the post. I think that done sensibly readers won't object too much, it doesn't really interfere with the main content.

If there are those who wish to bandy the word "shill" about that's up to them. All bloggers have some sort of overhead after all and ads help to offset expenses. I think ads in feeds are here to stay regardless of the "anti" brigade.

Just my $0.02.