I’ve been beta testing the Yahoo Publisher Network ads here on my site for the last few months. This evening I logged in to check how they are doing and noticed they added RSS ads as well. Pretty nice set-up, it generates code for WordPress or Moveable Type and has good installation instructions.
Anyway, I figured what the heck and shoved them in - if they bug you (or not), feel free to leave a comment.
UPDATE: I got an e-mail from YPN this morning announcing the new RSS ads - I guess I must have logged in right after they put the feature live.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Sven adds this Comment:
I think one ad is really okay - after all, it’s not blinky blinky flash, but only text.
November 16th, 2005 at 1:35 am
Ian Landsman adds this Comment:
Oh man you’ve got to kill the RSS ads. They reek of desperation. I believe in the Dave Winer theory,which is that your blog IS your ad. Make money off it by pushing your task software or getting consulting gigs.
November 16th, 2005 at 6:27 am
Chris adds this Comment:
Alex, I’ve been reading your posts via Newsgator RSS aggregation for a couple of weeks now. Sad that your RSS ads were what finally brought me back to your actual site to comment, but good that it’s engaging your audience.
The ad that was delivered to my RSS agg though, had this title:
“Imagemicroderm Microdermabrasion Systems”
and then the ad content was:
“The only microdermabrasion machine that has a lifetime warranty and four …”
So unless it somehow knows about my skin problems, it doesn’t seem very targeted… keep up the good content, I enjoy your posts.
Chris
November 16th, 2005 at 7:22 am
Chris K adds this Comment:
They don’t bother me. I don’t mind text ads…it’s the flashing, flash, hit the monkey, pop up/under kinda ads that annoy me.
November 16th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Alex adds this Comment:
The contextual-ness of the ads don’t always seem so relevant to me either…
Ian - are you sure I’m not just ahead of the curve?
November 16th, 2005 at 11:02 am
Ian Landsman adds this Comment:
could be……….
Adding some to my feed now
November 16th, 2005 at 11:28 am
Joe W. adds this Comment:
They’re terrible. Please turn them off.
November 16th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Brett adds this Comment:
They don’t really bother me, but they seem odd on a personal blog. I’m sure within a day they’ll become noise and ignored just like the ones on Engadget. They’re low key enough to ignore that easily.
November 16th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
Andy Fragen adds this Comment:
Alex,
I don’t mind especially ’cause you just provided me with another entry in my NetNewsWire stylesheet to {display: none;}
Andy
November 16th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Brett, I think your comment is a good one. People are now used to seeing Google AdSense, etc. on personal blogs, but not in the RSS feeds. As the ad tools expand to offer RSS support, I think you’ll be seeing more personal sites with ads in the feeds as well.
I’m thinking about setting up the ads so they only show in every other post or so - every post does seem like a bit much.
November 16th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Michael Koziarski adds this Comment:
Alex,
They made all your posts show as ‘unread’ in FeedLounge, and because they’re an image, the force a horizontal scroll in FeedLounge.
They annoy me, but not enough to unsubscribe, but the ads are irrelevant (all vonage) and affect my ability to consume and skim your feed.
But hey, if it’s making you money …
November 16th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Marking the posts unread and horizontal scroll in the 3 column view were issues I was aware of. I don’t know yet if they are making money, I’m going to leave them for a week or two, then make adjustments once I have some data to work with.
November 16th, 2005 at 11:02 pm
alexking.org: Blog adds this Trackback:
RSS Ads Update
I’ve scaled back my RSS ads experiment to show ads in half of my posts instead of every post. So far, the RSS ads are a dismal failure - averaging barely one click a day. Some feedback I’ve gotten from friends indicates this could be due t…
November 26th, 2005 at 10:07 am
alexking.org: Blog adds this Trackback:
Goodbye RSS Ads
The RSS ads were an interesting failed experiment: 20 days, 10 clicks. Ouch!
I’ve removed the ads until they prove relevant enough to be more than just an annoyance to my readers. Maybe I’ll check see if they’ve improved in a few mo…
December 7th, 2005 at 11:03 pm