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RSS Feeds are a powerful internet marketing tool that’s taken on several variants. Amazon.com uses feeds to help users keep track of bestseller releases. Wordpress.org uses feeds to deliver news on the latest Wordpress developments.

Websites like AbsurdlyCool.com uses feeds to distribute information about freebies and coupons. ReviewMe uses blog feeds to give advertisers a snapshot glimpse of publisher content and most affiliate companies offer RSS feeds for promotional use.

For bloggers, a RSS feed is mainly a content delivery and syndication system that allows readers to have access to your content without visiting your website.

While a blog feed’s malleability and search engine friendly structure leads to additional site visibility and traffic, it also has the effect of seducing readers away from your website.

This limits your website’s full monetization potential because a portion of your visitors will connect with your website in their feed reader and thus avoid the arsenal of contextual or impression-based ads you’ve carefully optimized alongside your content.

Some Solutions to the Problem

Feed advertising is a way of monetizing the community of readers who primarily follow your content through RSS feeds. In my opinion, there are three main ways to monetize your feed.

1. Manually include affiliate text or image links - Easiest way to get started. High likelihood for conversions if implemented contextually.

   
   

2. Private Ad Deals - Negotiate personally with advertisers and sell ad spots in your feed. Can be tiresome.

   
   

3. Advertising Programs for Feeds - Hassle-free method that ensures ad-rotation and uniqueness. A moderate number of subscribers is usually a publisher requirement.

Dosh Dosh’s Collection of Feed Advertising Networks

Here’s a current list of advertising networks which provide feed monetization options. Some like Feedburner offer category based (E.G. Internet, Business, Sports) advertising for your blog feed but others like Yahoo Publisher Networks offers contextual ads that are based on feed content.

Others like Q-Ads allow you designate ads base on specific keywords and programs like ThankYouPages allow to make money from interstitial ads which show up between your feed and its outgoing link destinations.

I’m quite sure that I missed out some networks, so please leave a comment if you know of any that should be included.

TARGETED CATEGORY-BASED ADVERTISING

Feedburner Advertising Network

Participation in FAN is by invitation, based on a variety of variables such as how long FeedBurner has managed your feed, your subscribership size and consistency, and frequency of content publication

Type of Ads: Text Ad, Text Ad with Logo, Banner | Rates: CPM

Feedvertising (Text Link Ads)

Allows you to run text link ads in your RSS feed. Apart from the Feedvertising ads, you can also choose to run your own in-house ads or affiliate links.

Type of Ads: Text links. No banner or buttons. | Rates: Flat rate pricing.

Pheedo

Pheedo’s FeedPoweredâ„¢ advertising platform converts your RSS feeds into rich, dynamically updating advertising that engages your audience…Pheedo retrieves your RSS feed several times an hour and updates your FeedPowered advertisements with any newly published items.

Type of Ads: Text, Logo & Text and Banner | Rates: CPC






CONTEXTUAL FEED ADVERTISING

Yahoo Publisher Network

Participants of the program must have a valid U.S. Social Security or Tax ID number, and web site content that is predominantly in English and targeted at a U.S. user base. Yahoo! will contact you about your eligibility to participate and about availability of the program.

Type of Ads: Text links | Rates: CPC

Kanoodle

Through BrightAds RSS, Kanoodle’s content-targeted sponsored links will be inserted directly into site owners’ RSS feeds within posts or as individual posts, with relevancy of the ads assured through Kanoodle’s topic-based approach.

Type of Ads: Contextual Text links. | Rates: CPC.






KEYWORD BASED ADVERTISING


MediaFed

Our ad placement system automatically inserts adverts into your feeds in one of two ways: Adverts are inserted every x articles where you control the value of x. Or by matching keywords to your article contents to target relevant advertising.

(Note: I’m not entirely sure if MediaFed is still currently offering RSS advertising.)

Type of Ads: Banners | Rates: Unknown

Q Ads

Q-Ads is an advertising network that frees writers from traditional constraints in advertising. Q-Ads delivers relevant advertising, based on user defined keywords, as image based text ads that can then be used on websites, in blog posts, and in RSS feeds.

Type of Ads: Text & Video Ads | Rates: CPC






INTERSTITIAL FEED ADVERTISING


ThankYouPages

RSS Interstitials that allows publishers to insert advertising into the links contained within their RSS feeds. When a user clicks a link from your RSS feed, they will are shown a short, fully branded, interstitial advertisement between the click of the link, and the final destination.

Type of Ads: Full page interstitials | Rates: CPM and CPC