This is the second in a three part series covering "How to Buy RSS Advertising." In part I, we set the stage and explained the basics of RSS and RSS advertising. Part II, includes putting together a smart RSS advertising media plan, including creative development.
What‘s Old is New Again
Back in 1998, I bought my first newsletter ad on an alumni newsletter. The goal was to drive leads for a consumer company. The newsletter was so effective; I switched 90% of my ad budget to newsletter advertising and away from banner ads. At that time, the state of the art was text because that was the lowest common denominator for all email clients. The creative consisted of 6 lines of text at 60 characters per line. Plain text was extremely effective.
Now enter RSS. I often compare where we‘re at with RSS advertising to Internet advertising in 1996 when the state-of-the art was text. Text still works today. Why? With both newsletters and RSS, they are vehicles which convey short concise bites of information. They are summaries of website content. Shorter, clean text ads fit the environment of newsletters in 1996 and RSS in 2005.
The RSS Consumer
Current research points to the RSS consumer is a very desirable to create a connection with. They are the early adaptors that spend more time online, consume more information, have a higher income and are between 18-34 years old.
According to Yahoo!, the RSS consumer looks like this:
When it comes to RSS ad creative, keep in mind that this is not search advertising. Keep your search ad Haikus on the search engines. The RSS consumer wants information. Your message should take the tone of telling vs. a selling tone. This means, tell me information about your product. "Click here, buy now" does not win over the RSS consumer... Remember how people are using this medium. They are scanning for information that is relevant to them, saving and reading it later. No one is going to be upset that they didn‘t receive ads. The goal is to get the consumer to save your ad content and respond.
The actual length of creative is still in flux. The biggest variable in the length of creative is the length of the content summaries (assuming the publisher is sending partial content in the feed). When targeting specific RSS feeds, look at the length of items in the feed. As a rule of thumb, you don‘t want your ads to be longer than the average content summary.
And don‘t be too surprised if a publisher returns your ad copy with edits. Remember, RSS is a consumer controlled medium. Publishers are aware that their readers have a one-click unsubscribe option right at their fingertips. This means, publishers are more conscious than ever of what ad content goes into their feed.
Limitations of RSS
I will be the first to tell you, RSS is not perfect. It has limitations. This is a new medium in its infancy.
RSS will mature. A few news aggregators will dominate the market. We‘ll be able to do more sophisticated targeting and add more robust creative. It‘s just a matter of time.
My best advice is to be patient when using it as an advertising vehicle. Test now to gain early understanding so you are a step ahead of your competition when RSS usage and RSS advertising explodes. RSS, or content syndication is here to stay.
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