How to Buy RSS Advertising - Part II: The Media Plan

October 16, 2005

This is the second in a three part series covering "How to Buy RSS Advertising." In part I, we set the stage and explained the basics of RSS and RSS advertising. Part II, includes putting together a smart RSS advertising media plan, including creative development.

What's Old is New Again
Back in 1998, I bought my first newsletter ad on an alumni newsletter. The goal was to drive leads for a consumer company. The newsletter was so effective; I switched 90% of my ad budget to newsletter advertising and away from banner ads. At that time, the state of the art was text because that was the lowest common denominator for all email clients. The creative consisted of 6 lines of text at 60 characters per line. Plain text was extremely effective.

Now enter RSS. I often compare where we're at with RSS advertising to Internet advertising in 1996 when the state-of-the art was text. Text still works today. Why? With both newsletters and RSS, they are vehicles which convey short concise bites of information. They are summaries of website content. Shorter, clean text ads fit the environment of newsletters in 1996 and RSS in 2005.

The RSS Consumer
Current research points to the RSS consumer is a very desirable to create a connection with. They are the early adaptors that spend more time online, consume more information, have a higher income and are between 18-34 years old.

According to Yahoo!, the RSS consumer looks like this:

• 71% male (47% non-user)


• 50% are 18-34 (36% non-user)


• 36% college graduate (27% non-user)


• 31% have some post-graduate degree (22% non-user)


• $74,116 average household income ($63,095 average user)

By the very nature of RSS, the RSS consumer has made a conscience decision to receive communications from a publisher on a specific topic of interest making that consumer very loyal. In addition to the desirable demographics of the RSS consumer, characteristics that make RSS attractive include:

• Clean, crystal clear channel


• 100% opt-in


• Micro-level targeted


• Persistent, always-on communication


• No Spam or bounced email issues

Getting Started
Most RSS advertising today is targeted by content categories (Technology, Business, Sports, etc) including sub-categories (Mac vs. PC, Small business, small business finance, Basketball, Football.) In some case, especially when the RSS feed is associated with a blog; the content can be micro-targeted (Green Bay Packer football). Keyword level targeting is not that widespread but coming soon.

When it comes to RSS ad creative, keep in mind that this is not search advertising. Keep your search ad Haikus on the search engines. The RSS consumer wants information. Your message should take the tone of telling vs. a selling tone. This means, tell me information about your product. "Click here, buy now" does not win over the RSS consumer... Remember how people are using this medium. They are scanning for information that is relevant to them, saving and reading it later. No one is going to be upset that they didn't receive ads. The goal is to get the consumer to save your ad content and respond.

The actual length of creative is still in flux. The biggest variable in the length of creative is the length of the content summaries (assuming the publisher is sending partial content in the feed). When targeting specific RSS feeds, look at the length of items in the feed. As a rule of thumb, you don't want your ads to be longer than the average content summary.

And don't be too surprised if a publisher returns your ad copy with edits. Remember, RSS is a consumer controlled medium. Publishers are aware that their readers have a one-click unsubscribe option right at their fingertips. This means, publishers are more conscious than ever of what ad content goes into their feed.

Limitations of RSS
I will be the first to tell you, RSS is not perfect. It has limitations. This is a new medium in its infancy.

Limited formatting options: The state of the art for ads in RSS feeds is text with a supporting image (jpg/GIF). RSS currently doesn't support flash or pop-ups. And in some cases your image will not be served due to offline reading or simply because the news aggregator doesn't support images.

Only 6% of the internet population is using RSS: Only 6% of the Internet population is using RSS. If you run a successful test with RSS and are ready to move beyond the experimentation phase, keep in mind you may be limited by the total audience size. Nevertheless, RSS usage is growing rapidly. Test now and be prepared for its rapid growth.

Limited targeting capabilities: RSS is a great one to many tool. A few companies are dabbling in one-to-one feeds but those solutions are not perfect either. Again, RSS is in its infancy. Look for more targeting capabilities as we move along.

Various displays of the content: With over 42 popular news aggregators in use (compared to 3 popular web browsers), there is no consistent user interface and not standards for how RSS content should be displayed for the reader. Some news aggregators display only headlines, while others display headlines and short summaries. Furthermore, news aggregators can have a two or three pane user interface, separate website versions, client downloads, or plugins to Microsoft Outlook or your browser.

RSS will mature. A few news aggregators will dominate the market. We'll be able to do more sophisticated targeting and add more robust creative. It's just a matter of time.

My best advice is to be patient when using it as an advertising vehicle. Test now to gain early understanding so you are a step ahead of your competition when RSS usage and RSS advertising explodes. RSS, or content syndication is here to stay.

Posted on October 16, 2005 3:05 PM
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