Battelle has a nice roundup of recent blogosphere discussion about the role of advertising in RSS feeds. My feeling: it’s inevitable. RSS feeds represent a cost to publishers (in terms of server load) and I don’t think headline-only type feeds (so structured to elicit a click and thus an ad served on the Web site) are what users are looking for. People generally understand that content costs money to produce, and they’re willing to be exposed to ads — and relevant ads can be a bonus — to access that content. I think users will eventually accept advertising in RSS in exchange for getting their content in this efficient, convenient format.