Google Adsense in Feeds - SD's Opinion

10/15/08

So my feed was finally switched over to Google’s new feed server the other day which now allows me to run Google Adsense in my feeds.  (Woohoo?)  Initially, I was a little frustrated and wrote up this quick post on the process, which didn’t come off all that hot.  Well once I let Google actually continue to work out the bugs on that first day after receiving notification, it actually ended up going through pretty flawlessly.   With it all complete, here are my thoughts on the service.

1.  Why not do it?  I tend to steer away from placing many Adsense ads on my blog because in my opinion, they look a little sloppy and get zero action on my type of blog.  But through a feed, they are directed specifically at the bottom or top of any post and appeal just to that specific post.  Right now I don’t have another way to run ads through my feed, so this way just makes sense, plus it’s not intrusive at all.

2.  Keep track of your feed stats.  There are other ways to keep track of impressions on your feed, but this now makes it even easier.  I can now tell each day if 20, 30 or 80 people are actually reading posts through my feed and seeing these ads.  It’ll make for some interesting testing going forward that will hopefully help me decide which types of Adsense ads should be used.

3.  A minor irritation.  You have to update all of the feed links on your site to your new google feedproxy feed.  This doesn’t take much time, and Google gives you a direct link to your new Feedburner page which directs you to your link information.  So not a huge deal, but it is definitely something that will need your attention.

4.  Easy customization.  Like any other Adsense ad, you can customize the colors and all that jazz.  There is also an option to let Google match up to your settings which I’ve done for now, so once again, not rocket science here.

Those are my initial thoughts, and for now I plan on running these ads at least as a stat tracker if nothing else.  Have any of you switched over yet?  If so, let me know what you think!


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