A while back, I read somebody's blog entry proposing the idea of "AdFeeds" as an alternative to putting ads into existing newsfeeds. The idea is to generate feeds with nothing in them but ads on some focused topic, and use those to generate revenue to support free feeds. If people want to try that, more power to them. I just don't see it working.

I agree entirely that a feed containing advertisements is going to have a harder time holding on to subscribers than the same feed would without ads. I understand why a person might not want to put ads into their feeds, instead advertising on their website if they click through the newsfeed stories.

But I disagree with the author on a few points. First, I think there are ways to make ads in feeds work. Making sure the topic of the ad matches the topic of the feed is one. Making sure the ad is only minimally disruptive to the reading of the feed is one. Providing an ad-free version of the feed for paid subscribers will help. Work and research will be required to figure out the best techniques, and some feeds are going to die along the way. But it's way too early in the game to throw the idea out completely.

The second area of disagreement is over whether people will subscribe to ad feeds. I'm sure a few people will, but it's difficult to imagine many such feeds keeping subscribers for long. A feed advertising auctions of rare collectibles would be an example of where it probably would work. In fact, the target audience for such a feed might even be willing to pay to subscribe to such advertisements. But beyond a few narrow areas like hobby-centered products where the deals come and go too quickly to find them on search engines, I just can't imagine why enough people would invite a stream of ads onto their computer for them to turn a non-trivial profit.

In fairness, the title of this entry, "Freeloaderism" doesn't fit the blog entry linked to above: it is not a rant about how advertising in RSS feeds is evil. But if advertising in regular newsfeeds does turn out to be totally unworkable, it will be because of the attitude of freeloaderism that is all too prevalent on the internet. I have to believe that someone will come up with a model that will work otherwise.