Google Destroyed Feedburner
I used to see a decent amount of ad dollar revenue via Feedburner. High quality ads, a few grand a month, all of which I plowed back into development. Feedburner essentially paid for the new site redesign.
Then Google took them over, and its been a total clusterf*&k ever since. They replaced a quality ad program with Adsense -- and its total shit now. Utterly embarrassingly dreck. How worthless it is? The revenue dropped about 90%. Gee, why aren't you folks reading TBP clicking on payday loan ads and mortgage broker leads?
Google took a wonderful RSS feeder -- and its still an excellent RSS/email feeder -- and made it irrelevant. Formerly strewn intelligent, higher end advertising, and completely destroyed it. Customer service is a disaster, the interface blows, Adsense is a pain in the ass -- Feedburner has become utterly worthless as an advertising platform. October ads threw off under $500, down 75% from the pre-Google days, despite RSS feeds more than doubling over the past 3 months.
Don't be evil? How about "Don't be sucky?"
To give you an idea of how irrelevant the ads served by Adsense are, yesterday, the Big Picture RSS feed had 40,305 Ad Impressions, which generated a grand total of how many Clicks? How about 17, or 0.04%. That's about what you would get from people accidentally clicking ads when navigating their email. Its just god-awful.
Anyone have any good alternative suggestions for another RSS feed? I am looking for simple RSS, with quality, relevant ads. The RSS traffic is between 25,000 and 30,000.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | 08:30 AM | Permalink
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BR,
I think the Rubicon Project may help you! If it works out, email me.
http://rubiconproject.com/
Elvis
Posted by: Elvis | Oct 28, 2008 8:45:26 AM
Oh, quit beating around the bush... what do you think about Adsense?
Posted by: wally | Oct 28, 2008 8:46:48 AM
a classic example of feckless Finance severing the thinking head of Economics.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/feckless
Posted by: Mark E Hoffer | Oct 28, 2008 8:48:54 AM
Oh come now. I'm sure the ads for Lily Allen ringtones are huge income generators for you!...
Posted by: Ironman | Oct 28, 2008 8:58:59 AM
That law of unintended consequences again .... quantity goes up...quality comes down.
Posted by: yves | Oct 28, 2008 9:00:30 AM
Try AdBrite....
There's another one, a better one, and the name is escaping me.... you need a referral to get in there with them.
Posted by: C raig | Oct 28, 2008 9:07:22 AM
that's what i like about BR, he's not afraid to tell it like it is....warts and all. very refreshing and comical to read. two extra credit points for proper use of the word "dreck".
Posted by: the man from Nantucket | Oct 28, 2008 9:08:47 AM
Why do you need 3rd party RSS, good blogging tools do it. Barry, it's time to dump typepad and go to Wordpress (the IT geeks use it almost exlusively so it has to be good) - just in time for the upgrade.
Just slap an ad from a good advertiser down the bottom of an article and let it auto syndicate down.
Posted by: steve from asia | Oct 28, 2008 9:09:59 AM
There are literally 100s of ad networks out there. As far as I know, none of them have out-of-the-box ad code that inserts units (and probably not IAB standard units in any event) into RSS feeds. Try TribalFusion, BannerSpace, etc.
But really, that's what you want. You don't want to switch off Feedburner because you'll lose a lot of your RSS readers who will not realize they have to switch. You should be agnostic as to how a user gets your RSS feed.
Solution: put the ads directly in the feed itself.
Posted by: Dan | Oct 28, 2008 9:13:02 AM
Sounds like Google took over Feedburner to deliberately destroy it and remove the competition to Adsense.
Posted by: Dan | Oct 28, 2008 9:18:14 AM
So....short Google?
Posted by: cliffynator | Oct 28, 2008 9:18:36 AM
I agree. What are they doing with feedburner? It sucks now.
Posted by: Curt | Oct 28, 2008 9:21:27 AM
Try Pheedo. They can insert ads into your feedburner feeds also.
Posted by: JFP | Oct 28, 2008 9:22:02 AM
...or the guys who paid for the old ads stopped ponying up and got replaced by the cheap schlock.
I can think of a lot of guys who were big advertisers who won't get any clicks in this market... or shouldn't be paying much for the ones they get...
Posted by: curmudgeonly troll | Oct 28, 2008 9:30:42 AM
BR --
As a fellow site publisher I hear your pain. On the other hand, Google did release AdManager in August and it's a great program for bloggers and sites with decent traffic. You're probably at the scale now where you can start selling your own CPM based advertising, and letting AdSense just fill in the holes. I directly sell about 80% of my traffic on long term (6 and 12 month ad buys) which net a far higher CPM than AdSense could ever reach -- and I let AdSense be the default for whatever unsold inventory I've got.
http://google.com/admanager
Good luck and thanks for the great blog.
Posted by: popo | Oct 28, 2008 9:43:06 AM
I don't think they do RSS feeds but you may be able to convince them to work on it or it may be in developement. The group is project wonderful and they have a fantastic advertising concept. I don't know if they will generate the revenue you are looking for but they could certainly add to it. I'm sensing a potential synergy. You would probably be better for them than they are for you initially but they have earned the recco. You can also place multiple ads through your site which will increase your revenue streams.
I have found their advertisers to be active though you may need to take a more hands on approach. If you want someone to manage the ad side of it for you or you need questions answered I can do. I use them myself for both advertising and publishing and I'm a happy camper
Posted by: DavidB | Oct 28, 2008 9:44:38 AM
How many bright young software companies were destroyed by Microsoft in it's infinite monopolistic wisdom? To bring us Vista?
Time to rejuvenate the antitrust acts and associated regulators!
Seriously, how many lines of business does the U.S. have in which there are no more than 2 serious competitors (totalling 90% of more of market share) in any local market?
Chips: Intel/AMD
Operating Systems: Microsoft / Apple
Productivity Software: Microsoft
Online Search: Google + a couple of yahoos
Soft Drinks: Coke/Pepsi
Two-Way Telecommunication: Your Cable Co & Your Phone Co.
Home Energy: Your local utility
... and so on...
And where we don't have monopolies or duopolies, we have crony capitalists and their pet politicians currying profit-making favors from Washington.
Sigh.
Posted by: Wisdom Seeker | Oct 28, 2008 9:48:36 AM
Yahoo :)
Google does what all monopolies eventually do. I'm sure you've read The Octopus.
But seriously, I agree with whomever (not really awake yet) that you shouldn't change feeds abruptly and fake out your readers.
I don't know enough about blog sites and feeds to give an informed opinion on it. It does seem like there should be a platform, maybe even one to put on your own domain that will give you stability of your own domain name and control of your own ads while still allowing access to the rss syndications you currently have. This would also protect you from the vagaries of ever-shifting internet business models.
Need more coffee!
Posted by: Mike in NOLa | Oct 28, 2008 9:55:02 AM
It would have happened sooner or later anyway. Does anyone really believe all of that ad revenue Google was generating was based on sustainable fundamentals? That people visiting any blog generated a million dollars or more in sales from those ad placements? It was absurdly insane.
The reality is we are(were) in an ad bubble. And, many benefited while it lasted. What you are seeing is less of a function of Google's destruction of Feedburner and more a function of unsustainable factors. The largest ad spenders are financial firms and auto-related companies. Have you seen how much they have sliced their ad budgets lately? Welcome to the new world.
Google's bubble has been pricked.
Posted by: bdg123 | Oct 28, 2008 10:03:05 AM
hmm... I read via RSS and I can't recall ever seeing ads in this feed...
Posted by: David T | Oct 28, 2008 10:33:29 AM
Buy the competition so as to destroy it?
How very Microsoftian.
Posted by: Joe Baressi | Oct 28, 2008 10:36:15 AM
I read you through Google reader, and about 50% of the time the ad at the bottom has been for Lily Allen Ringtones.
Posted by: PseudoNoise | Oct 28, 2008 10:43:35 AM
alright, i just clicked on an ad just for you.
Posted by: falcon | Oct 28, 2008 10:57:59 AM
If you make money, how will they.
it's like you don't understand the system some times.
:)
Posted by: Eric Davis | Oct 28, 2008 11:06:33 AM
Timely blog. Thanks. I've signed up for AdSense but haven't installed it because I think a lot of the clicks generated on financial sites comes from various forms of click fraud. People click on ads on each other's sites, I'm speculating. Given your traffic of some 541k unique visitors/month, according to quantcast.com, you should be selling ads directly or through some broker who can sell them for you. You're the 4,200th largest web site internationally, and brokers, mutual fund companies, banks, etc. should be on this site big time. If you have any ad agency contacts, you might want to chat with them about who the big web ad brokers are.
Your rankings at Quantcast.com are here:
http://www.quantcast.com/bigpicture.typepad.com
I hope you update us on what you find out.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | Oct 28, 2008 11:11:48 AM
