RSS Advertising is Wasteful

There’s a huge thread over at kottke.org on RSS advertising and if feedreaders will be blocking ads. (um, yeah, some of them will).

David Winer says advertising in RSS is boring. Boring because if the RSS feed is only summaries:

“the RSS feed is itself an ad.”

Yes, that’s exactly it. Plus, summary-only feeds are beneficial in 4 ways:

  1. They use less bandwidth: meaning I can get them when I dial-up through my bluetooth phone. Meaning I’m exposed to a publishers content more frequently.
  2. Readers can do what the wish with them more easily; add the feed to aggregators like My Yahoo or Tivo
  3. Linking to the full post, from a summary, shows publishers which stories are the most interesting to their audience. If I’m not interested in the post, I’m not going to be interested in the ad (see Without Commercials - TV Sucks).
  4. Linking to the full post keeps ad-supported sites afloat.

I challenge all RSS publishers to focus on better, leaner content. Rather than becoming another advertising-delivery method.