RSS Advertising Emerging As Targeted Traffic Driver, Lead Generation Tool

As marketers continue to expand their content library of blogs, white papers and other thought leadership, RSS advertising is emerging as a media platform for targeted lead generation. With research showing more than 50% of internet users are now using RSS feeds, many of the big brands in the tech sector are driving web traffic and leads by placing on advertising on targeted feeds.

“It has quickly developed into another arrow in our quiver,” says Howard Sewell, president and founder of Connect Direct Inc., (CDI) a leading direct marketing agency specializing in demand generation for high tech companies. “It is not a fit for every company, but for those brands that are putting out a lot of content and looking to attract a targeted audience, it can be an ideal media.”

Sewell views RSS advertising as a hybrid of online advertising, newsletter sponsorships, and content syndication, and adds that the early returns have generated an audience that is “influential, active online, responsive, and pre-disposed to relevant” content.

RSS readers are believed to be active consumers of content, with industry estimates pointing to visitors returning three times per day, reading approximately 20 items and spending an average of 20 minutes per visit. Other data shows RSS users spend 11 hours online per week, with 5 of those hours, or 45% of their online time, consuming content via RSS feeds

Sewell adds that the media has proven to be very competitive with search marketing on a cost per click basis. “It is definitely a less expensive way for us to get a client’s message out in a medium which is not so overloaded with other messages.”

As a recent example, Sewell says CDI tapped into RSS advertising for a recent integrated online campaign for Cisco designed to drive Web traffic, newsletter sign-ups, and RSS subscriptions for News@Cisco, an information portal that serves as a destination site and repository for Cisco-related news as well as for Cisco blogs, podcasts, videos, and other corporate information. Although he could not share specific performance metrics, Sewell says the campaign was successful in driving significant upticks in website traffic, subscriptions to the an e-newsletter and blog views.

CDI has partnered with a company called Pheedo to serve client ads with a network of RSS feeds that are most relevant to their target audience. CDI has also worked with Pheedo to develop and place “feed-powered” ads, which enables a client’s ad to be populated by dynamic content powered by the client’s own RSS feed.

Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo, points out that since RSS advertising is still a new media to most, the the average CPM was around $5 through last year. “The medium tends to drive deeper engagement than a banner or a form-fill. This tends to be content specifically geared towards individuals looking to learn more about specific topics.”

Flitter points to the dramatic growth of Pheedo’s network as evidence of the potential of RSS readers, with monthly unique visits growing more than 300% annually to over 12 million and monthly impressions climbing to over 1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007.