RSS is a new way to exchange information — mostly commercial — and distribute it.
Using RSS, site owners can send their content to subscribed users. However, experts say the innovation attracts only a small part of the audience. Only 4% of internet users consciously use RSS, per Yahoo!’s October 2005 study. It might seem that with such a small audience there’ll be no RSS advertising. But that’s incorrect. While some advertisers can benefit from RSS ads, you shouldn’t expect much.
Since the audience is fairly small, identifying the typical RSS user is easy: most often a male aged 18–34 with above-average income and higher education. This is worth considering when deciding to use RSS advertising. Overall, RSS is used by far more companies and advertisers than users. RSS is attractive because it contains no spam, subscription is purely voluntary, RSS targets specific users, and it doesn’t require large financial investments. No wonder many want to use it.
Although ads in RSS feeds are already two years old since their introduction, they’re still in the early stages of development. Companies specialising in feed management (FeedBurner, Feedster, Pheedo) create ad solutions, and Yahoo! and Google distribute contextual ads in RSS feeds. Both CPM and CPC ad models are available, but availability depends on the publisher. Not everyone wants to put ads in their RSS feeds, but when publishers start losing audience, the situation may change — publishers will need to compensate for revenue drops with advertising.
RSS ads have an average CTR 8% higher overall. RSS ads and contextual internet ads have such high CTRs possibly because they’re relatively new advertising methods. Over time CTRs may drop as ads become familiar and users get used to them.
Many market players note the next stage in RSS development will be Internet Explorer 7’s release, which has a built-in RSS interface. Yahoo! Mail also plans to integrate full-featured RSS into its platform.
Content will also become more complex and diverse, with new management tools appearing. While RSS ad networks and publishers gather data on how effective various RSS ad types are, more advertisers will come to RSS.
However, it’s still a long way for RSS to become a new type of mail, a new email. People love additional conveniences, but it’s hard to make them abandon familiar and comfortable technologies.
