A Big Week for RSS Marketing

The following post was written by Ryan Naraine:

A flurry of RSS marketing announcements crossed the wires this week, including the launch of a new ad-supported aggregator and a service that embeds contextual text links in syndication feeds.

Here’s a sample of the announcements:

RealNetworks’ RealTime: The Seattle-based streaming media delivery firm has pushed into RSS content delivery with the launch of a hybrid desktop/Web-based feed reader. The service will compete with the likes of Bloglines and NewsGator and comes with an ad-serving component. It launches with a partnership with Feedster that allows users to search for feeds within RealTime. Personalized RSS feeds can be created based on keywords, providing an option to RealNetworks to serve contextually relevant advertising.

Text Link Ads Feedvertising: Cincinatti, Ohio-based Text Link Ads has launched a new service called Feedvertising that simplifies the display and delivery of text-based ads in RSS feeds. The service targets both site publishers and advertisers with a marketplace that promises to eschew the page-view and cost-per-click model in favor of a "cost-per-influence" ad-targeting concept. Feedvertising is already delivering text ads in RSS content from several high-profile bloggers, including the TechCrunch network.

Federated Media Publishing: John Battelle's advertising and publishing network is experimenting with a unique concept of displaying RSS content as display ads. Anti-virus vendor Symantec is serving up content generated from its Security Response blog as display ads now appearing on comment pages of Digg and on the home page of Techdirt. On a related note, Gabe Rivera’s Techmeme has launched a “Sponsor Post” section that displays content from blogs as the advertisement. The ads are automatically updated whenever the paid sponsor updates the content on the blogs.

Pheedo: The provider of RSS marketing solutions is teaming up with SimpleFeed to combine their respective RSS marketing expertise. The deal opens Pheedo’s RSS marketing and feed growth services to SimpleFeed customers – helping them generate revenue from their RSS content, increase feed readership and expose their content to an expansive audience. Participating SimpleFeed customers can join the Pheedo network of publishers, offering Pheedo advertisers access to expanded RSS and on-site inventory. In addition, Pheedo can now offer customers new RSS feed layouts that are similar to their web sites and are measurable through SimpleFeed’s templating and URL publishing technology.