RSS and Weblog Ads? 39
Worried About Blipverts asks: "Last week I signed up for an RSS feed from a small site and saw that ads were being inserted into content. I was somewhat surprised, even though I'd heard companies like FeedBurner and BlogMine are providing such services. I'm mixed on the subject ... on one hand, compensating webloggers financially is a powerful way to demonstrate the power of weblog syndication and publishing. On the other hand, the deluge of contrived content (spam, weblogs about mortgage refinancing, etc) is sure to follow. My question is: Are you in favor of ads inside RSS? If not, will you unsubscribe from your feeds that use them?" While it's only fair for sites to seek some form of income for various reasons, what behavior would you consider "going too far" when it comes to advertisements?
depends on the feed (Score:5, Insightful)
If the feed provides full article text, I think ads are reasonable. With full articles, I have absolutely no reason to visit the site, so I'm eating bandwidth and giving nothing in return.
If, on the other hand, the RSS feed just has headlines, I think that ads are too much. With a headline-only feed, EVERY message is ALREADY an ad for the full article on the web site, so putting even more ads in is just excessive.
Re:depends on the feed (Score:2, Funny)
I agree. I plan on sending my RSS feeds through my spam filter. Hopefully that'll cut down on the ads.
Re:depends on the feed (Score:2)
The full-text feed with ads bothers
Aggregator Filter (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't disguise ads as content (Score:2, Insightful)
Tricking your readers will cause them to stop being your readers.
Re:Don't disguise ads as content (Score:2)
Excellent point. The issue here is that RSS feeds are rendered in different ways, depending on the XML parser reading them, and there is currently no standard for setting advertisements apart from content. I think it would be considerate of the RSS publishers, if they are going to include the ads in their feed, to mark them differently, say with an "advert" attribute in the title tag (the W3C should be contacted about standardizing
Re:Don't disguise ads as content (Score:2)
Evidently, no they [slashdot.org] can't. [go.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And thus another arms race begins (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention that if you had some kind of Pointcast-like kind of system, you could very well write a hacked client which would receive the ads but never display them, and nobody would be any the wiser.
But your main point remains. Today we have the technology to ignore/skip some of
So (Score:1)
Re:So (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
On the other hand, the deluge of contrived content (spam, weblogs about mortgage refinancing, etc) is sure to follow.
Why on earth would you subscribe to a newsfeed about morgage refinancing? You do know how feeds work don't you?
Ads being inserted into legitimate feeds is another matter. If it bugs you, don't subscribe to them, same as not visiting websites that foist annoying ads upon you.
Just a continuation.... (Score:1, Redundant)
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!
Why, even my sig has an ad....
Re:Just a continuation.... (Score:2)
And your post has an ad for your sig and what is strange is it work, I read your sig :-)
It's no problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's no problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on the feed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depends on the feed (Score:2)
Re:Depends on the feed (Score:3, Insightful)
I will happily visit websites that have ads around the edges (I reserve adblock for use on blinking flashing things). I occasionally see cool things in Googles adwords. But I will not put up with ads mixed into my content.
Re:Depends on the feed (Score:2)
Re:Depends on the feed (Score:2)
I don't see this becoming too successful, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no ethical problems with ads in RSS feeds. But from a user experience point-of-view, I have a hard time imagining that I would stick with an RSS feed with anything remotely resembling obtrusive ads. I might tolerate a single Google-text-ad type ad on an excellent full-text feed, but much more than that and good-bye. (Including a non-"excellent" feed; merely "good" and I'll likely just unsubscribe.)
You can slap an ad on a webpage, but you can't just slap one on an RSS feed. I just can't see this becoming a problem, and anyone that tries to make it one will probably end up self-destructing.
I think it doesn't matter (Score:2)
We will train ourselves to ignore that ad above that says "Test your skills with Java(TM) and win an Ipod. Take the challenge for Java(TM)". Ads are a must for many, if many bloggers didn't have some type of revenue coming in to support their sites, then many would not exist. Financial support is a necessity for many. So, we will get over that as we have gotten over the RSS feeds.
And if it's in XML, I'm
Re:I think it doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
If by "gotten used to" you mean "blocking with extreme prejudice," then yes, I will be "getting used to" RSS adverts as well.
Freshmeat (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Freshmeat (Score:2, Interesting)
I've noticed this on my site - linked in my sig.
I get lots and lots of hits on my feed URLs, frequently from agregators and readers. But a lot more from Firefox (you can tell because of the user agent string, and the "random" time of day).
The bandwidth used by multiple hits on these small feed files is fairly significant, especially when broken bots will poll the feed every five minutes. Ouch!
I've dropped a
Hosts file (Score:2)
eg:
127.0.0.1 ads.server.com
I do this with Slashdot and other sites I visit frequently. It makes the pages load so much faster.
I would not click on the images if I could see them, so I do not feel that I am doing something unethical. In fact I am reducing bandwidth costs because I wouldn't purchase the advertised product/service anyway.
Are we talking about copyrights? (Score:1)
Unobtrusive, Simple to Remove (Score:1)
I've noticed these ads too. Because they are text, they don't tend to bother me much, apart from the fact that they are almost inevitably styled/formatted rather than letting the feed reader handle the layout (RSS is content, not layout, and ads should NOT screw with this).
In any case, it shouldn't be too difficult to do a little regexp, because the ads stick out like a sore thumb in the feed code and tend to stick to the same method for inserting them for any given feed. Once you block that div or whatha
Ads and Blogs (Score:1)
Re:Ads and Blogs (Score:2)
Love/Hate relationship (Score:2)
Advertising is a love/hate relationship. Its irritating to get the adverts in the middle of our content, but on the other hand it funds the content provider, meaning that we get content (or get more content, or get better content).
I haven't seen advertising in RSS, but I've been expecting it for some time. The problem in my mind is how it is achieved. In my opinion, there should be no way to place image links or automatically downloaded content into an RSS feed (unless they are merged on the server sid
Re:Love/Hate relationship (Score:2)
Would probably cost them more than they make...
Unless the whole feed comes through the ad company - but I can't see many people willingly subscribing to an RSS feed that points to doubleclick.net :)
Re:Love/Hate relationship (Score:2)
It would ... but then the site and the advertiser would have to take this into consideration into terms of click fees, etc, so that it is beneficial to both parties.
Freshmeat on Slashdot has them (Score:2)
There goes the neighborhood.
ads in rss (Score:1)
Limit (Score:1)