Is AdSense for Feeds Worth It?
When AdSense for RSS feeds was announced, a lot of people cheered. FeedBurner’s ad network was OK, but it catered to select publishers who had reached a certain number of subscribers. AdSense on FeedBurner meant even the little guys could now monetize their feeds. However, from the feedback that I’ve gathered, the service leaves much to be desired. Critics have been especially vocal the past few days.
What went wrong
1. Poor contextual targeting. Several sites, such as Mashable, have reported on ads that are extremely questionable given the context of their feeds.
2. Lower eCPM. A video blog on Center Networks voices out their disappointment with the substantial decrease of revenues from Feedburner ads ever since Google took over, from eCPMs of $10 and above to only a small fraction of it.
3. Unreliable metrics. With Google’s acquisition of Feedburner, many expected the feed statistics to improve, but a year later there aren’t much improvements to speak of.
4. Feed count gaming. Since a site’s feed count became a status symbol, gaming the numbers followed, with evidence across the Internet.
5. Hard to setup feed ads. From the comments on Google’s AdSense blog itself, people seem to be having a hard time setting up the feed ads, especially with migrating their accounts from Feedburner to AdSense. Google probably didn’t anticipate this much interest, and so:
“Google will soon provide a self-service process to migrate from an account on the original FeedBurner website to a Google Account. We have temporarily paused processing of new manual migration requests; we are working doggedly through the initial queue of requests and will re-open account migration services as soon as the first batch is completed. (If you have already submitted a migration request, please look for an email response from Google once your migration has completed).”
What Google should do
1. One suggestion I’ve been seeing is to create a ratings system depending on the nature of the ads, much like movies and video games. Publishers should be able to choose whether or not to permit mature advertising on their sites or not, which I think would benefit the AdSense program as a whole.
2. Due to the low eCPM, some publishers have been trying out other feed advertising providers. If Google wants to stay on top, it should improve the eCPM, or revive the Feedburner Ad Network via AdSense and keep it public.
3. Use its mighty dollars to fix the feed stats and make it look as professional as Google Analytics.
4. Make the feed count numbers secure and honest. Without this, it would mean next to nothing really.
Conclusion
Even with all its faults, there’s still no denying that FeedBurner provides a great service in delivering site feeds. However, it leaves the door open for competitors to whiz past it by being sluggish in fixing its known issues and what’s turning out Google’s less than stellar monetization program. So, are you sticking with FeedBurner and hope Google fixes the mess, or are you gonna try other services? Leave your comments below.
