Skip to content

Feedster introduces ads to RSS feeds

August 17, 2004

logo_feedster_big.gifEweek magazine reports Feedster Inc. is embracing RSS advertising with plans to add sponsored links into its feeds of search results.

Feedster, a search engine for blogs and syndication feeds, will include the ads both as sponsored links along side the search results when users search for blog articles on Feedster and in actual RSS feeders users subscribe to.

Eweek reports:

When users conduct a search on Feedster, the site gives them the option of subscribing to an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed of the results. Feedster will start incorporating the sponsored links in its feeds. It will clearly label the ads, which will appear as every sixth headline in the RSS feeds…. While it will start with the feeds generated from search results, Feedster eventually will expand the ads to other feeds as well.

….Users wanting ad-free feeds can pay a $10 annual fee and receive a Creative Commons license for noncommercial use of the feeds.

This news of ads on RSS is creating a lot of buzz on the Internet. There’s no doubt there is growing interest in using RSS not only to promote a site but also to make money from feed content.

However, I do not see ads on RSS feeds to be a big issue for lawyers. Lawyer marketing blogs for which readers subscribe to direct RSS feeds to their desk tops or email updates, are not going to include ads. That’s unless lawyers are looking to make money from feeds from their blog, something I would strongly advise against. It’s tacky and would generate little money for 99.99% of lawyer blogs.

Where ads on RSS feeds may have some value for lawyers would be if there is a blog or news feed with a substantial number of readers who may interested in the lawyer’s legal services. This would be the same as lawyers buying sponsored links on Google AdWords or Yahoo’s Overture which links would be seen by those doing a relevant keyword search. Though blog growth is staggering, I think law firms are going to be lucky to find niche blogs on which buying ads on the RSS feeds would make sense.

At this point I do not see much value in buying sponsored links on a site like Feedster. Google has a track record for generating a huge number of searches. The majority of people do not know there is such a place to search blog feeds, let alone that Feedster is the place to do it.

Posted in: