Here’s hoping that members of the Yahoo Publisher Network didn’t have any important plans hinging on the combination of advertising and RSS feeds. It appears Yahoo’s decided the two things don’t work well together and has discontinued its efforts in this area as a result.
An email sent to publishers (and reprinted by Barry Schwartz) explained, “We wanted to let you know that we are closing our Ads in RSS program effective February 2, 2009. We have ended this beta program to focus on other more broadly used ad products for our publishing partners, such as Sponsored Search and Content Match. We recommend that you remove current Content Match tags from your RSS pages.”
Since the Ads in RSS program was introduced in November of 2005, its death comes as something of a surprise. Like Gmail, it seemed like a product that would just exist forever with its beta tag intact.
Of course, the Ads in RSS program wasn’t as popular as Gmail, and that’s presumably where the problem came in. Yahoo Pets and Yahoo Briefcase have been cut in recent days, too; it may be that new CEO Carol Bartz is already trying to get rid of poor performers.
Regardless, Yahoo concluded its message to users by saying, “Please be assured that we continue to invest in both our Sponsored Search and Content Match products and are excited about many upcoming improvements for 2009. We appreciate our relationship with you and look forward to working with you to grow our business together.”
