RSS Advertising ... Where's the Targeting Part?

FeedBurner is said to be ready to officially launch their RSS ad network today (hmm ... haven't they done that like a few months ago??), as reported by both ClickZ and DMNews.

At the say time, Feedster is launching a self-service RSS advertising network, bringing RSS advertising to both small advertisers and big brands.

I love all of these guys ... FeedBurner, Feedster, Pheedo, ... They're breaking the ice for RSS advertising, moving the industry forward. Without companies like this, the world of marketing would be much further from experiencing the power of RSS.

But all is not perfect, naturally.

Feedburner and Feedster are offering category/topic ad targeting, as far as it's been explained by now. Nothing wrong with that, but it's already the end of 2006 and RSS advertising isn't really that much different from traditional online advertising.

So, RSS ad people, where's advanced targeting, such as behavior-based targeting? Frequency capping? Contextual targeting?

The only way I see RSS advertising making in the long-run is that it becomes fully integrated with other online advertising channels.

For example, if a visitor comes to my site from a certain campaign and makes a purchase, I want to stop displaying the ads for that product to him via all of my ad channels and start serving ads for another product.

If I'm doing brand advertising and start an interaction with that prospect on my site, I want my advertising to automatically adjust to that ... on all my advertising media.

We're already doing it on the Web. When is it coming to RSS?

BTW - here's some great insight on RSS advertising from ClickZ:

Ads are being sold on a CPM basis, with pricing between $4 to $7 per-thousand impressions. Initially, creative will be limited to four lines of text of around 190 characters. But the company says it's considering allowing graphic ads eventually.

"We've had some interest from advertisers who want to do display advertising," said Hill. "But first we want to build acceptance and make it consistent with the media which is text oriented right now."

On a similar RSS note, although a somewhat different topic, here's an interesting article that will give you some food for thought on where the internet world might be going.

Here's a quote I can't agree with, yet ...

RSS is a new medium. It's not like the web any more than the web was like print. Remember back in the late 90s when the media execs tried to use the web to sell more papers? It doesn't work. Content wants to be consumed in the media its delivered in.

So RSS content is not going to be used to send people to the web. It's going to be consumed in the RSS medium, whatever that turns out to be.

While the author is making sense, the reality isn't quite there.

a] Actually, I know some great cases where the web was used to sell more papers, and actually worked on one (the Business Daily Finance in Slovenia).

b] Studies show that most e-mail e-zine content is consumed not in the e-mail client, but on the Web, provided the publisher provides links to that content online. It's still to early to say for RSS, but some of the metrics I've had access to haven't given more clout to either.