January 26, 2004 | Category:

Bringing Ads To RSS

Advertising is everywhere. TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, clothing and the web. We have gotten to be relatively good at tuning these things out.

At each step along the way, the advertisers need to try and improve (read: get more annoying and intrusive) to keep enough people watching to make money. All sorts of stupid ideas have been tried (the Mortal Kombat blood-squirting posters, anyone?).

They’ve got a new idea.

RSS Ads is going to provide a way for advertisers to put their ads in RSS feeds. Sign up for it and you could make money from click through or per view advertising.

In principle, this is a nice idea to let people make a little money from their sites. I’m all in favour of that. But, and you knew there was always a but coming, it simply won’t work.

Some people will immediately black list any sites containing the adverts. Others will come up with clever filters to get rid of the majority of the adverts and get back to normal browsing. The rest of us will simply use these filters and hope for the best.

The outcome of ignoring the adverts is the same as everywhere else. The market plummets, the advertisters get more desperate, and a new round of annoyance begins. Ad infinitum.

Maybe this is just pessimism, but web users don’t like adverts and are becoming more and more savvy to ignoring them every day. It won’t work.