Not really that much of the RSS publishing and marketing population seems to be interested in RSS metrics ... well, not many of the marketing population seems to be interested in any kind of advanced online metrics either, for that matter.

For those that do care what's happening with their RSS subscribers and actually want to use those insights to optimize their RSS marketing results, FeedBurner just made a major upgrade to their RSS metrics services introducing some cool new tracking features.

a] "Total" Reach: Reach will tell you what percentage of your total subscriber base is actually actively clicking individual content items within your feed.

The benefit for marketers is that they can now finally watch their readership trends (in percentages) and see how their changes in their content approaches are resonating with their audiences.

All FeedBurner needs to do now is break this down to new subscribers and loyal subscribers to give you a feeling of whether the changes in trends are the result of actual content changes or in new subscribers from less relevant sources for your business.

b] Podcasts: FeedBurner now allows you to track the number of downloads of rich media enclosures in your RSS feeds.

This will tell you how many people are actually downloading your podcasts and videocasts after reading about them in your feed.

What this unfortunatelly won't tell you is how long people are paying attention (listening, viewing) your rich media content.

How about if FeedBurner were able to extrapolate how your rich media content is resonating with your audiences by combining their podcasting and reach data, actually seeing how the behavior of your subscribers with your rich media content changes after they've downloaded a few times?

c] Uncommon uses: This will tell you how your feeds are being syndicated in addition to your content being delivered to your subscribers.

"This is a new concept we're introducing that really begins to leverage the critical mass of feed readers, bots, search engines, news filters, and other common feed sources that we observe. Uncommon Uses identifies and highlights places where your feed content is referenced or clicked that FeedBurner does not recognize as a common feed service. Uncommon uses includes contact with your feed by non-subscribers."

d] Item popularity: This last metric will give you more insight in to how popular your individual content feed items are. Not that much new, but still a good improvement.

But what's still missing?

Well, a bunch of stuff that would be useful to marketers and isn't available right now.

For small business marketers that don't have comprehensive web analytics tools it would certainly be welcome to track the actual conversions generated from your RSS feeds.