Google AdSense For Your RSS Now Live

by TechCrunch on August 15, 2008 · 73 comments

This post was originally posted at Techcrunch and has been republished here with permission.

After more than two months of testing, Google has finally turned on AdSense for Feeds. Formerly, these were FeedBurner ads. The acquired company has moved its advertising program over to Google’s system, and now any AdSense advertiser can tap into the Feedburner network.

The ads are contextual and come in different sizes and formats. Google Operating System, which noticed that the service is now turned on, reports:

The new AdSense for Feeds option lets you create a new ad unit that has a format automatically selected from 468×60 and 300×250. . . . You can choose if you want image ads, the ad frequency, the position (top or bottom of the post), the colors and a channel that tracks the ad performance.

Hopefully, this will turbocharge ads in feeds, which have not been a stellar performer so far. Does anybody click on those ads? Maybe they should be seen more as branding opportunity, because you certainly see them when you are scrolling through your blog and news feeds.

About the author...

– who has written 13 posts on ShoeMoney.com.

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{ 72 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Wilson August 15, 2008 at 11:54 am

I think it´s a very good improvement.
And a extra opportunity to make lots of money :)

Nice new design by the way …

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2 Jaseem Umer October 10, 2008 at 9:25 pm

It is nice to see improvement in both Adsense and feedburner. This is the power of collabration, isn’t it?

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3 wesley August 15, 2008 at 11:54 am

Very cool, are there alot of blog readers that allow javascript or do they transform it to HTML first?

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4 wesley August 15, 2008 at 11:55 am

Btw, no more threaded comments? :(

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5 Evita August 15, 2008 at 12:01 pm

Great news – I know a lot of people will benefit from this, I am actually surprised they did not do this sooner. But all in good time :)

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6 ShoeMoney August 15, 2008 at 12:04 pm

@wesley wordpress 2.7 will have native threaded comments and will be released next month. I figured we can tough it out a month or so ;)

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7 Michael D August 15, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Just checking in to say the new design rocks! Hats off to the Shoemoney design team.

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8 wesley August 15, 2008 at 12:13 pm

@shoemoney, but your new design is not very wide to accomodate threaded replies.

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9 Geiger August 15, 2008 at 12:14 pm

I tried the one from Feedburner and it froze WP until I took it out.

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10 Geiger August 15, 2008 at 12:15 pm

@Shoe It’s got to be a pain to apply those custom patches each time there’s an upgrade.

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11 Le Melon August 15, 2008 at 12:16 pm

About adsense for RSS – Bloggers may like it, but will subscribers enjoy it?
About the new design – One of my favourite things about it is the fact that the shoemoney logo is now clickable!

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12 Jaseem Umer October 10, 2008 at 9:25 pm

I think they won’t hate it, many top blogs have adsense in their feeds.

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13 Divij Bhatia August 15, 2008 at 12:17 pm

“I work at a New Media Communications firm in Boston, 451 Marketing (www.451marketing.com) and we do a lot of work with google adwords. I am always trying to learn more about the topic, and just wanted to thank you for your insights.”

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14 WcnKtm August 15, 2008 at 12:27 pm

Nice theme. Your blog now looks more professional except the ugly clickbooth sidebar ad.

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15 Jaseem Umer October 10, 2008 at 9:26 pm

It have to be nice when Shoe has paid for it.

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16 Hustle Strategy August 15, 2008 at 12:36 pm

Design could use a bit of work, like turning threaded comments on… Other than that it is ok… Ads in the RSS is a great thing and should be able to turn idle to profit.

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17 Stephanie August 15, 2008 at 12:36 pm

Pretty interesting. Due to the general poor performance others have had with ads in their feeds, I don’t think I’ll try this yet.

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18 Hustle Strategy August 15, 2008 at 12:37 pm

@Shoemoney, we can tough it out, but it will make the comment contest rough. The whole @ thing or ^^^^ or 6X^ without edits will get sloppy and lose focus fast

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19 Dustin August 15, 2008 at 12:43 pm

Hopefully one day ads in feeds will work. I hate signing up for a feed then realize they only give you a part of it and you have to go to the site to read the rest of post so you can see all their ads there.

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20 jim August 15, 2008 at 1:13 pm

I think you’re right on branding, it definitely gets your brand out there at a pretty cheap price. I’ve never clicked on an RSS ad but I do remember them because I see the same ones all the time.

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21 jim August 15, 2008 at 1:14 pm

BTW, I like the re-design, it makes everything look cleaner…

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22 River Girl August 15, 2008 at 1:45 pm

I wonder if anyone would click on those ads.

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23 rxbbx August 15, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Looks nice, but troubles with creating and managing, looks like it is not 100% ready..

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24 Lyndon August 15, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Cool another way I won’t be able to make money with Google :)

You have a hard enough time to get people to click on ads on your site, I doubt they’re going to click on one in the RSS feed.

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25 Justin Cook August 15, 2008 at 2:07 pm

I’m actually somewhat opposed to the whole idea of RSS advertising. It’s supposed to be a pure data feed, that pulls people back to your site. People trust it to be straight data, and they expect only one thing to happen when they click on the feed – go to your site. Embedding ads will only lower people’s trust and use of RSS.

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26 Justin Cook August 15, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Hmm, I’m not a fan of the redesign – now I can’t reply to peoples’ comments!

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27 Kashif August 15, 2008 at 2:23 pm

New variation of AdSense allows publishers to send text or banner ads alongside syndicated content using RSS.

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28 Owais August 15, 2008 at 2:24 pm

Today while opening my adsense account, i see the adsense for rss feeds tab. So finally it is on.

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29 Mudassir August 15, 2008 at 2:29 pm

I love RSS Feeds from a user point of view.

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30 Owais August 15, 2008 at 2:41 pm

What a great marketing and PR idea

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31 Travel blog August 15, 2008 at 2:43 pm

hmm, new design ?
why no announcement ?

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32 lasvegascom August 15, 2008 at 4:21 pm

are there any other options for ads in rss since google pays like crap?

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33 Zack August 15, 2008 at 4:31 pm

Is anyone making any money with RSS Ads? Not all that exciting that Adsense can be add… now instead of people reading and coming to your site, they can click ads and leave. Yay!

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34 George August 15, 2008 at 5:20 pm

I wonder how profitable they’ll be, apparently Google pays VERY badly on RSS ads..

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35 Billy August 15, 2008 at 5:46 pm

Even though im not going to use it I still have to give google adsense credit for give the publishers more tools

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36 Reid August 15, 2008 at 6:14 pm

I think this is definitely something that many people can take advantage of as it appears like it will be beneficial…

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37 Douglas August 15, 2008 at 8:00 pm

Wow this is awesome! BUT, I wonder how well does the ads pay.

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38 Anthony Farrior August 15, 2008 at 8:27 pm

Let’s wait to see if this will be “beta” as long as gmail.

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39 Storm August 15, 2008 at 8:54 pm

Will be interested to see how many people stop a number of feeds when they get fed up with GoogleAds over kill. Also I wonder the take up of people waning to advertise in “Feeds”.

For me I think advertising other parts of your website/brand would be more benificial, drag your feed readers back into your system and promote your own efforts.

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40 techdude August 16, 2008 at 12:04 am

Added this to my blog feed, but there’s some manual stuff Google has to do before it’s implemented into my feed.

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41 Jaseem Umer October 10, 2008 at 9:26 pm

It will be useful if you have lot of subscribers.

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42 DollarTravels August 16, 2008 at 2:20 am

I can’t see why the ads would work: I was always smart priced on Adsense on my blog… So I stopped using Adsense there.

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43 Elite Blogger August 16, 2008 at 3:04 am

Finally. Can see sites with HUGE RSS feeds making some good extra cash.

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44 Dick August 16, 2008 at 4:43 am

Google continues to improve. This process ensures him an advantage over competitors.

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45 Start Blogging August 16, 2008 at 7:10 am

Finally. The Feedburner ad network sucked; now that Adsense has replaced it I’m sure it’ll be worth it to monetize on feeds.

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46 SawanM August 16, 2008 at 10:09 am

Huge improvements for the big players on the MMO blogs!

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47 Emprendedores en Internet August 16, 2008 at 1:51 pm

I didn´t know it, i´m new in the websites business. That its a great benefit.

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48 Agent Magenta August 16, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Looking forward to when you get the threaded comments back again. Hey,I didn’t see anyone complain that you republished a TC article :)

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49 Dick August 17, 2008 at 3:49 am

I agree, for MMO blogs it will be very good.

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50 alifahru August 17, 2008 at 4:44 am

it is a good ide to include rss as alternative income. with our quality contents, it is very useful

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51 Tate August 17, 2008 at 11:46 am

sweet, now to go install it in my blogs rss feed :)

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52 TYCP Entertainment Magazine August 17, 2008 at 10:46 pm

@Shoe – your new design is wicked. Looks much cleaner.

As for the RSS ads – some people need to realize that everyone is different. I don’t use RSS ads yet, but I know people who do & many of them make pretty good money from it. To decide not to try it based on what you hear is rather silly, IMO.

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53 techdude August 18, 2008 at 2:28 am

I think I’ll hear back from Google about the final step for the RSS ad’s tomorrow.

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54 cheap used cars August 18, 2008 at 1:05 pm

*sigh* i will never understand the techcrunch reposting…

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55 Erica DeWolf August 18, 2008 at 10:35 pm

Sounds like a great way to utilize AdSense even more!! Thanks for the update!

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56 Project Wealthy August 19, 2008 at 10:29 am

Is adsense worth to try anymore becouse I think that you can`t earn any good money with anymore?

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57 Goran Website August 19, 2008 at 5:24 pm

The blog loads much faster then it did. The design is simpler. Overall I prefer the new design, well done UBD.

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58 Bonie August 20, 2008 at 12:22 am

I wish more revenue from this program, yeah…

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59 sergio.dares August 20, 2008 at 7:09 am

I’m not sure it’s a right way to go. RSS (at least for me :) ) – it’s a “pure content” stream, and one of the reasons I use RSS readers – I want to avoid 5123971235971235 different pop-ups, flash banners and adwords trashing my screen :)

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60 Geiger August 21, 2008 at 7:14 am

I bet you can expect more and more feed ads as readership goes up. I know that I only go to blogs when I want to comment (like this one).

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61 Otooo August 23, 2008 at 2:52 am

It’s a great idea and initiative by Google – won’t make too much money though with it

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62 Lowongan Kerja August 23, 2008 at 11:25 pm

hope it will increased our adsense earning..

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63 Dr. Teeth August 24, 2008 at 9:34 pm

I use feedburner adsense for rss

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64 terminator69 August 26, 2008 at 2:27 am

I didn’t think many people visited RSS feeds anyway.

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65 Zath August 26, 2008 at 5:49 am

I’m not convinced this will be that much better than Feedburner Ads in terms of performance, certainly on a site like mine, but surely you have to be fairly tech-savvy to be using RSS feeds and as such you won’t get a very high CTR?

I think I’ll leave this alone for now as my RSS feed is used more for syndication and getting my content out there to different audiences, I think Adsense in it probably wouldn’t help it and could possibly cheapen the look of the content?

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66 SEO Tricks August 27, 2008 at 8:48 am

Thats a pretty good idea.. I will surely use it but I am sure it won’t let me earn much.

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67 Dustin Cucciarre September 1, 2008 at 12:43 am

I haven’t really decided if I want to monetize my rss yet.

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68 jack September 9, 2008 at 5:42 am

it’s been long awaited , didn’t try it yet but I hope it will be another good money stream from adsense.

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69 Jeremy September 17, 2008 at 7:02 am

Someone make good money from adsense RSS feed?

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70 ways to earn online September 23, 2008 at 5:57 pm

This is really cool. I havent used this feature yet and dont intend to until I build up more subscribers. I lost most of mine after the domain switch.

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71 Jaseem Umer October 10, 2008 at 9:23 pm

I don’t think copying from Techcrunch is not a good idea, but I have to say you chose the right post.

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72 teraOm November 12, 2008 at 3:41 pm

hi,

this method requires that people move off feedburner to feedproxy. How do you suggest feedproxy? I am just starting to get readers. Should i move to feedproxy?

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