There's a new type of spam on the horizon and it's coming to an RSS aggregator near you. The newest type of spam that we can expect to start seeing in coming months will be RSS and ATOM spam. Essentially this means that RSS and ATOM feeds will likely start containing paid advertising slots distributed to those who subscribe.
I see a few reasons why this won't be a successful advertising stream. First, RSS is arguably not a mature technology and therefore it's adoption will be limited. That said, as more and more ATOM feeds and ATOM compatible consumers (aggregators, etc…) come online, we are likely to see more of this targeted advertising. Even so, the number is still fairly small, therefore while a valuable demographic is being delivered, the medium is wrong and the market not yet developed.
Second, as with other types of "spam", it will be largely ignored. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, consumers of RSS / ATOM services generally don't hear about new products or services through paid advertising, they get their information through website reviews, from specialized blogs and other bloggers and commentors on those specialized blogs.
Further, most RSS/ATOM subscribers, at least today, are mainly techies and abhor spam. Therefore they will do everything they can to stop it. We will likely see attempts from the developers of RSS/ATOM aggregation products and services to deliver new features to block advertising, pseudo pop-up blockers that will suppress the advertising slots. But again, if this plays out anything like E-mail spam, this will be a cat and mouse game as well.
Finally, the most popular blogs, the blogs that deliver the largest number of desirable users will likely be against very invasive advertising. Google AdWords and small ad's in the sidebars of most blogs have become accepted. However, I think that efforts to turn blogs into commercial endeavors will undermine their integrity and therefore erode the demographic they were initially meant to target.
It is the opinion of this blogger that the most effective ads will be run on sites that are very niche in terms of subject matter and don't play favorites to one advertiser or another. Instead the blogs will deliver this demographic because of intelligent reviews and balanced commentary. This will lead to more educated consumers and better products.
1. Jason: Don't forget that some feeds will be advertising: Go to Craig's List and you can get a feed of classified ads in the category of your desire. That is a smart use of RSS and advertising.
Posted at 4:44AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jeff Jarvis