Advertising

I’m participating in the beta test of Google AdSense for Feeds — enabled by Feedburner — so you’ll soon begin seeing an ad every few entries. Looking forward to seeing how contextually relevant these ads actually turn out to be. Your feedback (to theriver*at*mcnigel.com or in the comments) is welcome!

Seems people are beginning to learn enough about RSS advertising to share lessons learned and set forth best practices.

• Lessons from the Cutting Edge: RSS Advertising — Interview with Feedburner’s Dick Costolo
  
• Best Practices for RSS Advertising :: Pheedo.
  
• Google: Best Practices for AdSense for Feeds
  
• Yahoo! Publisher Guide to RSS (perhaps ad best practices are forthcoming?) [via SEW blog]
  

If anyone else knows of any such documents, please feel free to pass ’em along and I’ll aggregate here. Thanks in advance!

Since time permits more pointing than lengthy posting these days, here’s a good one:

Zach is understandably pleased about a story we posted today on a virtual ad agency that has sprung up in the MMORPG Second Life. It’s a really fascinating phenomenon how we humans (or maybe I should just say Americans) have the urge to create complex societies and economies, even within the virtual game environment. And with commerce, naturally enough, comes advertising. After all, if you are selling clothing, food, or other virtual goods, how do you get the word out about it? Interesting stuff.

Looks like Yahoo! isn’t the only online player to go cross-media with Mark Burnett. My colleague, Zach Rodgers, breaks the story of a content/advertising deal between the TV production house and Microsoft’s MSN. It’ll be interesting to compare/contrast how Yahoo! and MSN differ in their approaches to a similar challenge/opportunity.

Don’t think I squeezed in a blog entry yesterday, due to the deadline for a column that ended up being called The Inventory Issue. Really enjoyed doing the reporting on it, as I got to talk with some interesting folks, including Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Majestic Research’s Seth Goldstein and About.com’s Peter Horan. I blabbed on plenty in the piece itself so I’ll shut up here.