Interesting debate emerging over RSS advertising with the latest from Wired with Andy Baio of Waxy.org making the rather bizarre statement
“RSS is a syndication format. It’s not well-suited to carrying ads…It’s designed for syndicating content, and content only. No navigation, no design, no advertisements.”
And its designed to suck up bandwidth and cost money too, Mr Baio.
RSS can, is, and will support advertising.
Whilst there is little doubt that heavy advertising would severely damage RSS (after all who wants there RSS feed dominated by large advertising banners or advertising larger than the post they are reading), limited advertising, such as one or two line text links done tastefully so as to not overpower the content (unlike that proposed by Overture) not only is a legitimate form of advertising, but will complement the format and assure the ongoing viability and success of RSS.
The alternative of no advertising in the medium to long term would see sites realise that their RSS feed is cannibalising viewers from their main, advertising supported pages, resulting in a decline in advertising revenue, costing large amounts of money in bandwidth and considering ROI (return over investment), they will limit or shut their RSS feeds, resulting in an end to the current RSS boom and a decline in the market.
