Jeremy just forwarded me this article on Clickz that shows ads in RSS that are an entry by themselves (ie the ad itself is a stand alone post) perform nine times better than RSS ads attached to other posts. They can generate CTR up to 7% (much better than any RSS ad I’ve ever had).
Good results if you want to take this approach – but my immediate question is that if you start putting posts into your RSS feeds that are just ads do you risk alienating your readers? I’ve seen a few publishers using this technique recently and the ads definitely interrupt the flow of an RSS feed. Interested in your thoughts?
The other finding in the study mentioned was that RSS ads put in every second post seem to perform better than putting ads in every post.
I have to say that my own RSS Ad experience using Adsense to provide the ads has been less than spectacular. They don’t even keep me in coffee.
What do you think about these findings? Do you use RSS ads? Would you consider using them as stand alone posts?
