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Google Ads for RSS Feeds Goes Beta 180

Posted by Zonk from the my-suggestion-for-next-feature-root-beer-floats dept.
flood6 writes "Google has launched their service to offer contextual ads via their AdSense program through RSS feeds. The program is currently in Beta but will allow webmasters who offer RSS feeds of their content to include ads in the feeds (which often appear on other websites or through aggregators); someone clicks on the ad, the owner of the feed makes a little scratch."
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Google Ads for RSS Feeds Goes Beta More

Google Ads for RSS Feeds Goes Beta

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  • Extensions quickly please! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oneandoneis2 ( 777721 ) * on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:45AM (#12588588) Homepage
    If they're going to start contaminating my Live Bookmarks with bloody adverts, I hope it won't be long before Adblock can cover RSS feeds as well as web pages. . .

    • Re:Extensions quickly please! (Score:5, Funny)

      by zerbot ( 882848 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:49AM (#12588642)
      Damn all ads! Bandwidth is free and those schmucks don't deserve to get paid for their sucky content (even though I like it enough to check it every day).
      • It just gets annoying after a while to see all the adds in your favorite RSS feed. Won't this just make people unsubscribe or use a RSS reader than filters out the ads?
        • It just gets annoying after a while to see all the adds in your favorite RSS feed.
          Don't even get me started on the subtracts - those really chap my ass.
        • Well, the stupid slashdot RSS feed has the occaisional ad showing up in it (not on all stories, but some it seems). It really bothers me because my feed reader doesn't have the same "block images from server" that I'm used to using with firefox.
    • It actually looks like they're suggesting * [google.com] that people include the AdSense javascript at the end of the full text article in the feed, rather than inserting advertising links within the links/list of articles itself.

      Slightly less annoying. Only slightly.
      • That's called "lip service". It's like selling a bunch of e-mail addresses to a spammer and "suggesting" that they not be used for spam.
      • Yeah, just the other day I was saying to myself, "Man, RSS feeds are too slim. Just text and a few HTML tags for links and emphasis. Content providers need to add more stuff. Maybe pictures or javascript or something. You know, make it more like I'm viewing a website instead of some text on screen."
    • Ad blocking now needed for RSS feeds... A novel idea, but if ads in feeds start being too annoying, I would definitely use it.

      Google is trying to make people place the ads sensibly [google.com], name at the bottom. Kudos to Google for that one.

      But how does one insert this into one's feed?


      • mhh ...

        The nice thing about RSS-feeds is ... you do not need to subscribe to them. ;)
      • Because we all know

        ----
        ADS BY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGLE

        Buy "know" on eBay
        Find everything you need. Aff
        ebay.com

        Buy "firefox" on eBay
        Find everything you need! Aff
        ebay.com
        ----

        how well your average blog

        ----
        ADS BY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGLE

        Blogs? Good? Bad?
        Give opinion and win $50
        yourservey.com

        Buy "blog" on eBay
        The worlds biggest mktplace Aff
        ebay.com
        ----

        places Google's unobtrusive AdSense boxes.

    • for those that jump on the adblock bandwagon, i hope you are realizing a long term effect of your behavoir. publishing good content costs money, and many sites are funded via adsesne. if you keep blocking ads publishers will either stop publishing or start making money in a different way.

      whether you realize it or not, adsense is the first mainstream micropayment system. with the proliferation of ad blocking comes the next gen internet when you have to pay 5 cents to view some page etc. are targeted te

      • if you keep blocking ads publishers will either stop publishing or start making money in a different way

        That's why on all (yes, all) the web pages I regularly visit, I pay for a subscription where the option is available. Even when it doesn't actually benefit me in the slightest.

        I pay for Slashdot, LinuxQuestions, Userfriendly, I've donated to Mozilla, to Slackware, to the FSF, and various others as well. With the exception of seeing a /. story a few minutes before non-subscibers, I've not gained any

        • Re:Extensions quickly please! (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          As someone who has tried the honor system, let me tell you that you're part of a tiny minority. Even very unobtrusive ads in a low paying niche create more revenue than donations, at least for those of us who don't happen to operate one of the top 1% of all websites. That is true despite ad blockers and a notoriously click-shy target demographic of mostly Firefox users. Donations and subscriptions just don't cut it for the majority of webmasters.

        • If web site owners don't LIKE adblocking, perhaps they should have thought of that before they got so damned obnoxious about shoving their flashing banners and popup adverts in our faces in the first place.

          So because some advertisers put annoying intrusive ads on their pages, you block the low key, text only ads from google as well?

          • In 90% of Adsense 'installs', they look every bit as annoying as a banner. They disrupt the layout and keep my eye from scanning through to the text/info/photos on the page that I came to see. I came to read, not to have someone try to snooker me into buying shit I don't want.
        • 1. You are perfectly free to use Adblock, especially since you do your share of paying for websites.
          2. Those who cannot pay, should not mind seeing ads, especially if they are as unobtrusive as the Google ads. There are no flashing banners or nasty popups from Google and they seem to believe that it should be kept that way.

          From their best practices page [google.com]:
          Don't include more than one ad unit per article. Feeds represent an uncluttered, highly targeted medium, and these characteristics should be preserved
      • Good post. Insightful. I'd mod you up but I want to comment instead.

        I acknowledge your points, however, there is an effect to which adsense is detrimental to the web experience beyond the irritation of advertising.
        The concept that page visits can make money just by viewing a page with in-context ads has led to a resurgence in pages designed just for that purpose, and the SEO (Search-Engine Optimisation) that pushes these pages high in the webs indexes makes it harder to find the real material you're af
      • I don't click on the ads in the first place, why should I waste me time viewing them, or waiting for them to load?

        If I don't click on the ad, nobody gets paid. So if I'm not going to click on the ad anyway, who cares if I see the ad or not? Likewise, I don't buy anything from a TV ad. So who cares if I fastforward through the commercials.

        I adblock all the major advertisers, anything stupid enough to announce itself in the URL as an ad, all intellitxt, and the big ads in the middle of websites that I

      • Personally, I find all adverts intrusive - from billboards to ads in RSS feeds, albeit on a different scale.

        I dont watch TV, and I dont listen to the radio. Part of the reason is because there'l very little worth watching and less worth listening to, but the main reason is because watching or listening to 5 minutes of a program then being bombarded with 5 or more minutes of adverts is extremely fucking annoying.

        The same applies to adverts online, whether it be on a webpage or in an RSS feed. They're a
      • To all the people that take this "the poor content providers need money, so they have to use every method of getting ad dollars as possible" I say, if they are publishing the content to make money, or even break even, charge for the freakin' content. There is always someone out there who will provide similar content for free because it interests them. Most of the popular free content providers started doing it for fun, then realized they could turn a buck or two. If they need to trick me into clicking ad
      • Here's an idea -- how about an extension that stops ads from displaying or doing anything, but tricks the ad-server into believing that ad's been displayed or even clicked on. The user doesn't have to look at the ads, the content-provider gets his money, and the advertiser gets screwed.

        It's win, win, win all around.
    • Agreed...Google's ads are sucessful because they are non intrusive. When I saw this idea I thought this is even MORE intrusive then popup ads...because at least I can block those. I can think of nothing more "evil" then RSS "stories" that are actually ads.
      • Except that Google's ads are no longer *guaranteed* to be non-intrusive and non-distracting.

        The moment I saw google serving up adverts in the style of those fake system warning messages, was the day everything from */pagead/* got squished by my adblock filter.

        They've only got themselves to blame.

    • Why on earth would you adblock ads in an RSS feed? You don't care what's in the feed as long as adblock does its job when RENDERING any web page, regardless of how it got its data.

      Google ads don't bother me at all, since they're well structured, non-abusive text, but if you are bothered by them, adblock should do its thing without modification.

      • I'm not going to do it but ..

        I run a website which has articles on it, each article has one google advert on it.

        But relative to my article bandwidth the RDF feeds I host (which only contain the 'intro' to an article and a link to the full thing) consume something like 66% of my bandwith.

        When you have a lot of users each checking the feed through livebookmarks, KNewsticker, etc, that adds up quickly.

        Especially when they poll the feeds at regular, but essentially random, intervals.

        I know /. has a bit on

    • There is a Greasemonkey user script [philmccluskey.com] which claims to block ads in RSS and Atom feeds, but I've never used it so can't tell you if it works.
    • I don't use Live Bookmarks; I use Bloglines because I can access it from any computer. But ...

      I noticed the ads on some of my feeds. They're images instead of text, which bothered me because they are sizeable. Unintrusive is not a word I would use to describe. Sure enough, AdBlock will get rid of them.

  • Worthless writeup (Score:4, Informative)

    by grazzy ( 56382 ) <grazzy AT quake DOT swe DOT net> on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:47AM (#12588610) Homepage Journal
    Googles has released their adsense-program for RSS-feeds, its available to users with more than 100 subscribers.

    More info straight from google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/feed-me.htm l [blogspot.com]

    Apply form: http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/aff [google.com]

  • RSS ads? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:48AM (#12588619)
    Slashdot has RSS ads... but they also place the entire article listed on the site in the RSS feed. I can understand that a little better...

    However, listing in a typical RSS feed (with just titles and summeries) is dumb. It's like a porn site where you never know if you are going to click on something legit or an ad.

    • It's like a porn site where you never know if you are going to click on something legit....

      If you are for legit content I think you're looking in the wrong place ;)
    • From the best practices [google.com] page:

      Syndicate the full text of your articles. The more content that is available in a site's feed, the better the user experience, and the more likely people are to subscribe your feed. If you can't put the full text of your articles in your feed, then in addition to the headline of each article, include as informative a snippet as possible of the article's text.
      Don't include more than one ad unit per article. Feeds represent an uncluttered, highly targeted medium, and these cha
  • Google is simply pursuing one more avenue of content delivery for their advertisers. Those who wish to find ways to try and block the new ads should take note of one important thing, however: Google's ads are teeny, unintrusive, and even I find myself clicking on them often. Consider the repercussions of trying to block the RSS ads as equivalent to commercial skip on TiVO - advertisers pay for everything, and the deliverer of them makes less.

    I, for one, like to see Google make money.
    • The ads might not be terribly intrusive, but this whole idea sounds like it'll be making it easier for people to blur the separation between content and advertisements. Google may suggest that you put your ads at the bottom, below all the content, but it's going to be tough to regulate that.

      I know they're a business, and making money is important to their survival, and expecting them to do only the most altruistic things would be naive. This move, however, seems to go against the "vision" that Google has s
    • As they mentioned in their initial paper [stanford.edu]:

      "we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."

      or are they proving that we're all so dope fogged that we only give money to that which is repetitively or pervasively advertised - hence feeding this business model as the only viable one for public services.

  • Dont know but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Virtual Karma ( 862416 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:49AM (#12588636) Homepage
    This is what i really didnt want. As a content provider its great.. but unfortunately this time I'm both the content aggregator and content publisher. My site Newster.net [newster.net] aggregates news from RSS feeds and displays one news every 15 minutes. I'm sure in the coming weeks the news providers will have Ads in their RSS feeds (some already have and I had to remove them from my list to aggregate). So imagine if I use the Google Ads too. The end user will end up seeing the news headlines, the orignal news provider's ads, and my ads. Then to read the whole story they will visit the orignal site and again see tons of Ads.

    My point is to just read a news story Joe Sixpack will have to find his way through tons of Ads.

    • Re:Dont know but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by hkmwbz ( 531650 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:52AM (#12588675) Journal
      Actually, Google recommends placing the ads at the very bottom, below the actual content [google.com]. This might not be such a bad thing after all.

    • Re:Dont know but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cluening ( 6626 )
      I actually wrote my news aggregator [wirelesscouch.net] as a direct response to ads - when Slashdot went off on its "ads and subscriptions" idea and Yahoo's front page turned into an ad-fest instead of an information source, I whipped that up to collect news for me. I guess I will just have to change it to remove links that check in with Google's ad server if I need to...

  • How does this work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slim ( 1652 ) <john@har[ ]p.net ['tnu' in gap]> on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:50AM (#12588647) Homepage
    A cursory browse through the links in the article, and a couple of clicks beyond, does not explain to me how this works.

    In the standard Adsense service, one puts a snippet of Javascript in one's pages, which the browser runs to fetch ads. The ads are targetted using what Google knows about the referrer URL, and the browser's IP address.

    I don't believe many RSS aggregators will do anything with embedded Javascript in an RSS feed, so how does Google add ads to a feed? Does this only work on feeds hosted by Google?
    • that the method that generates your feed would have to make a call to an adsense web-service at google to receive the content of the ad which could then be inserted into the feed.

  • GREAT!... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Splab ( 574204 )
    Or not, its bloody annoying when people does stuff like that - try grabbing the slashdot rss feed - it will put in

    and tags into the feed which contains ads.
    Don't style the rss feed! If the links doesn't go to your site and you want ads, then don't offer the bloody feed!

  • Beta? (Score:5, Funny)

    by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:55AM (#12588720) Homepage Journal
    The program is currently in Beta

    No, say it ain't so! A Google program that's in beta? I'm shocked!

  • It's Official (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @09:58AM (#12588752) Homepage
    Google is no longer a search engine/content delivery service. WE are now the product being sold by Google.

    Sure it's no different fro how television and radio stations make money, but I think we need to face the fact that Google now exists primarily to sell ads.

    • Re:It's Official (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nb caffeine ( 448698 )
      Google exists to make money, like any other company. Simple as that, really.

    • Re:It's Official (Score:4, Interesting)

      by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <.slashdot. .at. .nexusuk.org.> on Friday May 20, 2005 @10:05AM (#12588850) Homepage
      I think we need to face the fact that Google now exists primarily to sell ads.

      Is this not how it's always been? The primary reason for a company to exist is to make money. Google makes all it's money through ads, so obviously Google's primary objective is to sell ad space. Ad space is more valuable if more people see it, so if google continue to provide an excellent service then they will attract more people and make more money from the ads - everyone wins.
      • ...everyone wins.

        Except, perhaps, people who are being increasingly inundated with ads.

        Yes, Google exists to make money, and content providers do too. I don't expect a sanitized, ad-free internet, but the popular myth around these parts that Google is "for the people" is just that: a myth.

      • everyone wins.

        Remember when you started to pay cable TV to get rid of the commercials?? remember how did you feel when your cable company started to put commercials in their channels? Remember when then it started to provide a Pay Per View option to see movies and shows without commercials?? .

        Google will continue to get marketshare and people credibility, after that, it will be easier to make whichever move he wants. Note to /. Google fanboys mods: I am not telling it is good nor bad, it is economies, an
        • Remember when you started to pay cable TV to get rid of the commercials?? remember how did you feel when your cable company started to put commercials in their channels?

          Errm, I dunno about you, but I don't pay Google...

      • Google was relatively ad-free (Score:4, Informative)

        by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @11:58AM (#12590217)
        Random point, but Google was founded as a technology company, built to design and license their technology to companies like Yahoo. Google.com WAS simply a proof of concept site, but as it grew as a destination and they changed their business model to be an ad channel.

        But originally, they were a technology company selling their tech/search results to media companies that would include the advertisements. Much like a studio that puts shows out in syndication... the local stations sell the ads, NOT the studio.

        Not that it matters much, but Google's primary objective WAS to have the best search results so the media companies would license it, now it is to use the search results to accumulate visitors to sell ads to.

        Alex
    • What i would like to know is when will the madness (good madness? bad madness?) end!! How long can they hold this for. These guys are releasing new services/products/cool tools almost weekly!. Good stuff. I'm not complaining...

      yet.
    • With all due respect, when wasn't Google an advertising company?

      Google makes over a billion dollars a year in advertising, and their new products (mail, maps, local, etc) serve to enhance their knowledge of their users. They sell other products, like licensing and search appliances, but that revenue is miniscule compared with their ad revenue.

      Much of the time, comparisons between Google and Yahoo! or MSN are less appropriate than comparisons between Google and Doubleclick (or Overture, which is now owned

      • Re:It's Official (Score:3, Insightful)

        by shish ( 588640 )
        What's amazing is that the Slashdot crowd, many of whom are vigorously anti-advertising, has embraced Google and does not regard Google as evil.

        Google ads are simple text, and on-topic for the page that they're placed on, so I may actually be interested in what they're selling. Regular ads are painfully animated gifs, advertising stuff that I don't care about.

        Advertising isn't evil by nature, it's just been implemented poorly by 99% of advertising companies

      • I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot, but I'm not anti-advertising. I'm anti-deceptive-advertising, I'm anti-stupid-fluff-advertising, anti-advertising-that-seeks-to-convince-the-consu m er-they-have-a-need-they-really-don't. etc. I'm very pro on ads that lead me to stuff that I'm genuinely interested in. I've subscribed to publications *just* for the ads. ("I... uh... subscribe to Computer Shopper for the articles, uh huh.")

        Someone mentioned skipping through commercials using a TiVo. I don't know
    • No, google exists primarily to make money. They do this by providing various services to the consumer (such as search) and selling ad space. I don't think anything has changed, has it?

      Saying that we are being sold by Google is a rather pointless (albeit emotional) statement. Google sell ADSPACE and provide a service. In what way is it more precise or more insightful to say that they are selling us?

  • And so the struggle continues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @10:08AM (#12588876) Homepage
    Advertising on the Web (as much as I personally hate it) is a complicated thing. It does support web sites that allow their owners to continue providing good content in a timely manner. As a reader of sites, I appreciate this bargain. Of course I ignore the ads. That's a problem, so the advertisers got more aggressive to get my attention. So I blocked their ads because they were too intrusive.

    Now some sites become so weighed down by ads it's painful to look at the sites to try to read an article. Lots of "Next >>" links and blocks of flashy color in the middle of an article. Aaargh! Ah, so we escalate the battle by using the RSS feeds instead. Bliss! Just the news and nothing but the news!

    Escalation part deaux: They provide ads in the RSS feeds. Aaargh! We block the ads. They hire hit men to kill us -- ok, maybe we haven't reached that stage yet. But man, I sure get tired of this war of advertising. You'd think they'd catch on that those of us running screaming the other way from ads might not be the best audience for said ads. But no, they think that if they force feed their ads to us, Clockwork Orange style, we'll actually buy their hated products!

    And given the consumer bent of most people, they are sadly probably right.

    And for those webmasters who use advertising to survive, may the Force be with you. I understand the bargain you make, and I will still read your sites, and if you find a particularly clever and targeted ad, why I might even view it. It's a complicated issue.

    • "And for those webmasters who use advertising to survive, may the Force be with you. I understand the bargain you make, and I will still read your sites, and if you find a particularly clever and targeted ad, why I might even view it. It's a complicated issue."

      I think if webmasters and ad creators would put a little thought into making ads look nice and not saturating a page with too many of them, I would have no problems with them, just as I have no problems with ads in magazines. If they blink, move
      • Flash bogs down my system if it's too fancy. (I don't know why, but Flash on Mac Firefox seems to have that problem, at least on my 800 MHz TiBook). If it uses Flash when HTML would suffice, I ignore it. If it's using Flash where Flash does make sense and it bogs me down, I leave.

        Flash is overused wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much.
    • It's a complicated issue

      Not really. Just ask yourself: would you rather pay those same sites to see the content without ads? If not, you either aren't that interested in the material, or you are willing to put up with the ads. There really aren't any other options (other than the content going away because the providers don't want to pay all that overhead and burn all that time as a charity to you, their loyal visitors).

      If we could just de-escalate back down to simpler text ads that you won't block, t
    • If you had someone hitting your rss feed once ever 15 minutes for any length of time, you'd realise rather quickly that a lot of people abuse rss, and perhaps deserve to see ads.
  • how are they supposed to throw ads down my throat if i don't subscribe to the damn feed?
    • A website subscribes to the feed server-side, then prints it as part of the web page -- eg the boxes on the right hand side of the slashdot front page are keeping track of what's happening on other sites; the ads would be placed amongst those.

  • How will this effect sites like Technorati? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DanCentury ( 110562 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @10:21AM (#12589024)
    Technorati [technorati.com] works by reading RSS feeds and then letting you search the feed item descriptions and content. Will Technorati end up being a minefield of Google ads? I assume they'll start parsing them out, and maybe banning feeds that use them. Maybe. Maybe not, since their profit model is based on Google ads as well.

    Google has banned some spam blogs [waxy.org] from their seach listings, but really, what's the difference between a spam blog with an RSS feed that makes money with Google ads, and Google droping ads directly into a feed?

    Someone help my simple mind grok the difference.

  • Click through ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by el_womble ( 779715 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @10:26AM (#12589070) Homepage

    Why do companies on the web insist on click through ads? I can't click through on TV, Radio or Billboards and they've work fine for decades?

    A short message to increase brand awareness is often all thats needed.

    • I wonder how much more coke I'd consume if a website reminded me how caffeine addicted I am. I don't think I've ever seen a soft drink ad online.

  • Good thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bigmurd ( 884582 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @10:54AM (#12589335)
    If this encourages more people to use RSS feeds, then that will be a good thing. As far as I know, google still haven't implemented a system to allow Advertisers to choose which site \ RSS feed they will be listed on. Until this happens, most users shouldn't have a problem with the Google system as there's no way for advertisers (apart from Google) to wield undue influence on the publishers.

  • Call me when they have popups in RSS (Score:3, Funny)

    by s88 ( 255181 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @11:01AM (#12589413) Homepage
    This is great and all, but I'm not gonna use it until I can launch a popup through the RSS aggregator for my penis enlargement pills.
  • There are a dwindling number of web pages without Google Ads, is it really a good idea to be saturating the entire Internet experience with everything Google?

    Afterall, is not variety the spice of life?

    Rivalling the replication success of viruses through a symbiosis steeped in capitalism, is the Internet destined to become one great big Googlenet?

    Pray not.

  • Does that defeat the purpose of RSS? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gremlins ( 588904 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @11:44AM (#12589993)
    Well I don't know about the rest of you but I use RSS as a souce of clean content to parse for a particular purpose. If they start adding in ads its going to culture up my nice clean data sources. I think that a better way to do this would be something like an email ad campaign opt-in. Where I would agree to get an email advertisement once and a while inexchange for a clean RSS feed.
    • That's actually not a bad idea at all, especially if the e-mail subjects clearly state that it's an advertisement. It would be a much better way to "pay" for content, and it might have some extra value in that e-mail is less transient than webpage ads, so advertisers may pay more.

      Of course, it'd be rediculously easy to circumvent, which is unfortunate in the sense that it'd probably keep this method from ever being put into practice. If they were tasteful and relevant, I think I would actually check out
  • from slashdot, in the form of a front page story.
  • here, too. Seems to be slightly more informative:
    http://ecommerce-guide.com/news/news/article.php/3 505976 [ecommerce-guide.com]

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