Choose Ads For Your Feeds: Pheedo Launches SimpleAd Server

If, as an RSS newsmaster, you've been struggling to find ways to earn an income from your uniquely crafted content feeds, then life may have started to get slightly easier.

Pheedo has just announced the launch of an advertising management tool that will allow you to insert contextual paid ads into your RSS or Atom feeds and track the resulting activity. The new service, named SimpleAd Feed Management & Serving Engine, will have Kanoodle providing the syndicated ads.

You will also be able to sell your own ads directly to those advertisers you support. Three high-profile sites, Topix, Lockergnome and PaidContent.org have signed up at launch.

This launch represents another (significant) piece in the jigsaw puzzle for newsmasters figuring out how to monetize their efforts. By all accounts, the service appears to be both highly professional and easy-to-use. There is a hosted version (avoids extra bandwith costs), and access is being provided to the API.

The turnkey service enables you to get started "within a matter of minutes", according to Pheedo. You will also have "complete control" over who the advertisers are and how the ads are placed.

The service also measures the "noise-to-value ratio on the fly and inserts ads when appropriate so not to over-burden the consumer with ads".

Here are the available features:

Reporting
- Revenue Reporting
- Real time campaign optimization
- Campaign performance reports for advertisers and agencies
- Feed statistics including unique users, click-through stats on content being read, total hits
Advanced Targeting
- Delivers advertisements to specific audience segments based on category and performance
- Delivers targeted ad by aggregator type (e.g. Bloglines, NewsGator)
- Automatic frequency cap
Scalability
- Smooth and continuous ad delivery through spikes in traffic or natural business growth
Campaign Management
- Allows for creative adjustments to be made immediately
- Parameters can be defined by time, date and click-throughs
Revenue Generation
- Large pool of advertisers available
- Direct your own advertisers to the easy sign-up process
Hosted Solution
- No need to build costly infrastructure. Provide anytime, anywhere access through the Internet. Enterprise version is also available.

This looks to be a significant development for the long-term sustainability of the newsmaster.

We will follow this very closely.