Feedburner to roll out AdSense for Feeds

The official FeedBurner weblog just announced that they will start rolling out AdSense inside feeds for a selected number of blog next week. So what does this mean to AdSense Publishers?

Well, not much really, unless you’re already in the FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN):

Well, publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content, with the added revenue that full back-fill coverage provides. And with AdSense, you’ll know that your back-filled ads are using the strongest contextual ad engine, ensuring the most relevant and profitable ads are delivered to your subscribers. And yes, ads are also sold via Google’s AdWords program.

Actually, AdSense for RSS feeds have been in best for years now — even way before Google bought Feedburner late last year. I’ve been in the FAN for over a year now and I think I’ve only made around $50 the entire time.

It’s not clear though if a Publisher needs to be qualified for FAN before they get accepted for AdSense for Feeds. I’ve already applied for that a year ago but have not gotten any reply from them. My guess is that it will be open to everyone once it goes out of beta.

It’s also unclear whether AdSense ads will only appear on feeds or will also be attached to RSS-2-Email deliveries as well. It’s been an observation that more than 50% of most RSS subscribers do so via email.

If FB would allow it, they might bump into a problem — if an RSS email subscriber signs up with a GMail account, then ads will be displayed in their GMail Inbox which happens to have AdSense ads too. That means, you get 2 competing AdSense ads — one from the publisher and another from GMail/Google. And that’s against Google AdSense TOS right?

Well have to wait and see how they implement this.