Anyone will now be able to use Mountain View, California-based Google's AdSense  advertising network to earn money using blog and news feeds from FeedBurner, the feed management provider it purchased for some $100 million in June 2007, with Friday's public launch of the Internet giant's AdSense for Feeds program. The joint program run by Google and FeedBurner had been available to a test audience since May. Public Rollout Of Google AdSense For Feeds Program The AdSense for Feeds program lets Web publishers earn money by displaying targeted Google advertisements alongside the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) news and blog feeds they manage through FeedBurner, and was created to help make it easier for the two Google-owned properties to work together. The SearchEngineWorld example image below shows the new AdSense for Feeds option.  AdSense users have begun seeing the option to try the newly-launched program within their accounts. Although Google has yet to make an official announcement that the AdSense for Feeds program is publicly available, news of its implementation has spread through reports from industry observers such as the unofficial Google Operating System blog and Web site TechCrunch. The rollout appeared to have begun with customers in the United States. Google announced that it intended to shut down FeedBurner's existing advertising system, the FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN), in a Wednesday message posted to its Google Groups message board system dedicated to feeds. Google said that FAN had stopped accepting new accounts in anticipation of the new AdSense for Feeds program. "No new applications for FAN publishers are being accepted and we expect the broad variety of options provided through AdSense will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential," Google said in the Wednesday message. RSS Feed Advertisements In Multiple Sizes And Formats The new program allowed AdSense users to choose from a variety of contextual ad formats to be displayed on any of their FeedBurner feeds, including text-only or graphical display ads in several sizes and colors, and to choose how often the ads would be shown to people reading their feeds. A mixture of both text-based and  graphical ads could also be selected using the Google program. Along with being able to choose from showing the ads above or below a feed, users of the new program were also able to select from either a wide-format 468 by 60 pixel ad, or a larger 300 by 250 pixel size suitable for devices with larger displays, according to the online help system for AdSense for Feeds. AdSense users choosing the implement the new Google program must specify their FeedBurner username and the e-mail address associated with their AdSense account, and ask to have their FeedBurner accounts migrated to the new AdSense program, although Google said that it was working on a method to automate the process. "Google will soon provide a self-service process to migrate from an account on the original FeedBurner website to a Google Account. Currently, migrating your feeds from from FeedBurner to a Google account is a manual process. We will assist you directly to ensure a successful migration," Google said. After tying the accounts together, Google will notify users "with specific steps for you to follow once migration is complete," according to Google. Google Integrates FeedBurner RSS Management With AdSense Ad Network Those using RSS readers are generally considered to be more technically knowledgeable than the average Internet user, and some analysts have questioned the effectiveness of showing ads to members of this group, who some say are less apt  to click on ads. Some FeedBurner users expressed concerns about a possibly diminished sales staff at the company after being acquired by Google. Some Web advertising industry observers expressed optimism over the AdSense for Feeds program becoming publicly available Friday, such as a member of one of the most popular online discussion forums for webmasters, WebmasterWorld.com. A member using the handle "ecmedia" wrote that the AdSense for Feeds program was "very clever and works like a charm," and added "I am hoping that it means more revenue." Another WebmasterWorld member wrote that the addition of advertisements to RSS feeds could spark new feed reader programs that can block the new ads, similar to the functionality provided by the popular Ad Block Plus add-on program for Mozilla Web browsers. "What this means is people writing feed readers will start filtering out the ads," the member, using the handle "incrediBILL," wrote. Related Links:
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