Get Serious About RSS. But Why?

For many CMOs, blog readers and RSS content represent fertile new ground for advertising. And for good reason. A new study released yesterday by comScore Networks shows "nearly 50 million Americans, or about 30 percent of the total U.S. Internet population, visited blogs in Q1 2005," which is an increase of 45 percent over Q1 of last year. According to this research, "blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections. Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online."

To reach this segment of Internet users, marketers are turning to contextual advertising within RSS feeds and blog posts using networks such as Google Adsense and Pheedo. PR agencies are also regularly pitching stories to blog writers as part of their mix of media relations.

This, and other recent surveys, miss of an important dimension to these emerging trends. Namely, the increasing ubiquity of RSS content in our lives. In an interview with E-Commerce News, Sally Falcow, of Expansion Plus, explains:

There are a lot people doing RSS who don't know they're even doing it... the technology is deployed inconspicuously at places like Yahoo and MSN and in browsers like Safari and Firefox. So you can be reading RSS and not even be aware of it. Feedburner, a Web site that tracks RSS activity, reports that feed subscriptions are growing at 1 percent a day... And USA Today and the New York Times have reported double digit increases every month in their RSS subscriptions.

What's more, RSS content is a "pull" model (as opposed to "push" advertising) that enables consumers to self-select their niche advertising experiences across a diversity of media devises, including mobile phones and TiVo. These new media realities have placed consumers firmly in a leadership position, with the consumer generated media now providing the front lines of online brand experiences through blogs, RSS feeds, review sites, user groups, and discussion forums. 

CMOs need to adjust their perspectives to focus not on blogs and RSS as simply a new venue for traditional marketing and PR. Instead, blogs and RSS are a community building opportunity to empower customer evangelists to develop messages and media content that fans out through this new bottom-up media environment.

Tags: marketing RSS advertising business media PR Blog