My last notes from the conference
Dana VanDen Heuvel, Pheedo
You can download the slides from this presentation here: Heuvel
RSS is a channel.
MSFT is integrating RSS in next version of Internet Explorer
+ Right Spam Solution—100% deliverability
+ RSS is self-organizing.
+ True permissioneaser to unsubscribe than e-mail.
+ Does not need to be part of a blog. RSS is simply an XML file that’s formatted properly to be read by a client. Any type of website, information can be RSS-readable.
Steve Semelsberger, Pluck
You can download the slides from this presentation here: Pluck
Launched in 2003. Consumer web 2.0 services. FeedFinder, Shadows, Easyjournal.
Mainly work with publishers & web companies . helping with content syndication , aggregation, and generation. Editorial controls, community management, and site integration.
They have data on 300,000 RSS users via Pluck
12% of Internet users are aware of RSS. 27% of users consume RSS via portal start pages without realizing it.
Browsers offering built-in RSS reading
Portals help you find & subscribe to RSS feeds.
Convenience is driving adoption.
We’re early in market overview & adoption timing.
Publishers’ question: should I aggregate or solely be aggregated?
Five years ago only a big firm like yahoo could do a deal with Reuters to incorporate their feed into Yahoo platform. Now, anyone can be an aggregator.
Case study: Austin-American Statesman. 300K registered users, 1M unique views/month.
Community blogging went live in Sept.
Initially launched around major events
Two sites: statesman.com and austin360.com
Four tiers of bloggers: staff, official, featured and community
One month later: hundreds of bloggers covering 1000s of new pages
Business case based on : increased registrations, new ad/sponsorships
Make it easy for people to use your user-gen. content
Elaine O’Garman, VP Strategy, Silverpop.
RSS Marketing.
You can download the slides from this presentation here: Silverpop
Historical product was ASP for sending email.
RSS is more than a distribution technology for blogs & syndicated content; it is a channel.
Jupiter estimates RSS usage has grown 83% year/year. Even faster than Internet browser in terms of adoption. Only 6% of markets unaware of RSS as a marketing tool (Nov. 2004)
How can marketers use RSS?
-corporate blog
-Syndicate web content
-Advertising in other people’s blogs and newsfeeds
-Newsletters
-Promo content
-Transactional content
What are obstacles?
– Adoptionbut not for long
– Immaturity:
– standards for reading and rendering still evolving. Today, readers are very inconsistent in how they render RSS. Check at different rates. Dont know who’s caching and who’s not.
– Bandwidth intensive and conservation methods not widely adopted
Broadcast orientation: measurement, targeting and segmentation, serving individualized content
Jupiter’s criteria for success of an alternative messaging distribution solution:
– Security
– personalized and relevant
– measurable
– guaranteed delivery
– end user control including permission support
– ubiquity
– open technology
RSS meets all of these requirements but two:
– personalized and relevant
– measurable
New generations of RSS content creation/distribution solve these issues by changing the paradigm. Separate feeds are created by subscriber. Jupiter has dubbed this, “individualed RSS, or IRSS”. Basically, it’s giving people a unique URL. Silverpop, SyndicateIQ, Subscriber Mail, are doing this.
Consequences of this shift: measurable, targetable, personalizeable, gather profiles, connect with other data (transactional, profile, account history)
Some more ideas on using IRSS for marketers:
Corporate blogs: reliable measurement, what is of interest, who are evangelists
Newsfeeds: what gets read, what gets passed on, better monetization
Advertising: targeted buys, reliable impressions
Newsletters: untapped audience, wide variety of platforms
Promotions: no PII needed, spam-proof
Transactional: no deliverability issues, non-refutability, phish proof.
Jupiter: 50% of population would subscribe to more things if they had to give away less personal information.
Spam-proof (so far)
Dana VanDen Heuvel, Pheedo
Four cornerstones of an integrated campaign: RSS, blogs, podcast, demo.
Monetization models for RSS: audience not expecting to pay subscriptions. Selling own ads not scaleable. Alignment with podcast networks and ad networks profitable and scaleable. 6-11% clickthru on RSS. Therefore: use a service like Pheedo.
RSS ads are stand-alone and clearly labeled & identified.
Integrated campaign example: Citrix (GotoMeeting) advertising on Chris Pirillo Show.
RSS Analytics are steadily improving.
Ipro.com is moving into the RSS analytics space.
RSS Advertising Best Practices:
-ads must fit the environment
– must be relevant and informative
-watch the content to ad ratio and unsubscribe rates
– Tell, don’t sell: create relationship
– be patient: RSS feeds don’t demand to be read.
One of their advertisers put an ad in every single post, and unsubscribe rates shot thru the roof.
