FeedShow and RemoteAds

FeedShow is an online RSS aggregator from France hoping to create a business around splitting advertising money with feed publishers. A publisher may opt-in to the advertising system and display up to two contextual advertisements alongside their feed. FeedShow receives a 50% split of the advertising revenues from publishers participating in the program.

FeedShow created a new RSS namespace allowing feed publishers to define their advertising (ad) provider, account number, and additional provider data such as an AdSense channel.

While advertisements (ads) alongside e-mail created new businesses and accounts for a large percentage of private e-mail usage today, feed publishers seem not too happy about an advertisement displayed in their readers’ chosen application.

I remember chatting with Lawrence Lessig last year about feeds displayed in ad-supported readers. I expected the issue to be the big fair-use debate of the blogosphere in 2005, but I think this year there may be enough new online aggregators of various business models for publishers to start to take notice.