There is some interesting data included in this post about a resurgence in advertising on top of RSS feeds. Historically this has been a disappointing category, most prominently featuring FeedBurner’s efforts to monetize the feed with embedded advertising. This is not to suggest that FeedBurner failed, but rather that it turned out not to be the slam dunk that many thought. It may be because ads are easily ignored, or even stripped out, in RSS feeds or that engagement rates are low, I really don’t know but monetizing RSS would be a big win for the media industry.
It had better be, because it’s certainly a larger part of publishers’ traffic. Thirty-four percent of global respondents to a March social media survey from Universal McCann said they had “ever” subscribed to an RSS feed. That represents a large jump from the previous year’s findings, when the agency found just 15 percent said they had subscribed to a feed. The data were gathered from 17,000 Internet users in 29 countries, aged 16 to 54.