Google Launches AdSense for Feeds
I noticed a new option in my AdSense account: AdSense for feeds, a program that displays contextual and placement-targeted ads in FeedBurner feeds. FeedBurner announced in May that AdSense for Feeds will be available to a small number of publishers and now it seems that everyone can use it.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google’s 2007 acquisition of FeedBurner brought feed delivery and audience measurement inside its publishing stack. FeedBurner had already made formerly paid statistics and branding tools free, while managing roughly 1.4 million feeds for nearly 800,000 publishers.
Opening the advertising program beyond its initial limited rollout turns that publisher infrastructure into a distribution channel for Google’s ad system, rather than only a tool for tracking and managing RSS audiences.
First-order effects
- FeedBurner publishers can add contextual and placement-targeted advertising to their feeds through AdSense, creating a standardized monetization option alongside FeedBurner’s existing feed-ad payout operation.
- Advertisers gain access to feed inventory whose audience and delivery are managed through FeedBurner.
Second-order effects
- Publishers using FeedBurner have greater incentive to keep feed analytics, distribution and ad sales within Google’s services, strengthening the value of Google’s earlier acquisition.
- RSS publishers that do not use FeedBurner face a more fragmented path to comparable targeting and advertising administration.
Third-order effects
- If feed monetization becomes tied to centralized measurement and ad-serving tools, RSS publishing shifts from a largely publisher-controlled distribution format toward platform-mediated revenue infrastructure.
- The move points to Google using free publisher utilities to build ad inventory across formats beyond web pages and search results.
The trend: Google is extending its advertising infrastructure into publisher distribution tools, combining audience management with monetization.