Spliced feed networks with ads

Brad Feld blogged yesterday about a new FeedBurner effort to place advertisements (ads) on more feeds through the creation of aggregated feed networks. A single curator selects a few feed URLs to create a mega feed for a topic or musing. FeedBurner sells targeted ads inside of the aggregated feed and its various forms of syndication — HTML, RSS/Atom, JavaScript widget, etc. — on a CPM basis.

Who other than FeedBurner gets paid for these advertising (ad) impressions? It seems like another attempt to mine the seemingly free gold laying on the riverbed named user-generated content. The idea isn’t much different than Squidoo, a company donating a percentage of profits to charity to make it seem a bit less like photocopying the work of other writers for profit.

In the literary world there are established means for paying writers for aggregation of work. A network such as FeedBurner could have all publishers opt-in to the possibility of network selection and provide such publishers an approval process for new published channels. Payments could be made on a per-use basis when a page using the content turns a profit. Authors with a Creative Commons By-Attribution license and a valid e-mail address in their feed could receive an opt-in e-mail for channel alerts.

Perhaps it’s best to use a network of venture capitalists as a test group, since they may not notice the pennies dropped in their hats from the crowd passing by, but the network seems like an under-thought launch announcement plan from FeedBurner and its VCs.