InfoWorld Runs Ads in RSS Feeds

Posted on June 13, 2003

I suppose it was only a matter of time… The Shifted Librarian is reporting that InfoWorld has begun running advertisements in their RSS feeds.

I think I’m with Shifted on this one:

Here’s my take on this: if you are providing me with the full text of the article in my aggregator, then I’m willing to trade you my eyeballs for an ad. However, if you’re just sending me the headline with a one- or two-sentence description, then that’s the ad. Your intent is to get me to go to your site to read the full article, at which point I will see the ad (probably lots of ads), and the transaction is complete – I clicked onto your page and became a number you can sell to your advertisers and in exchange you let me view the content.

Makes sense to me — either give me the whole story in the feed and an ad to go along with it, or just a headline with no ad. Heck, maybe offer two feeds, one configured each way, and let people choose. Just don’t give me headlines with ads, which requires me to go to your page with more ads to get the whole story — in other words, don’t use this to advertise to me twice.