One current discussion in the search community is Google’s patent application for embedded advertising in RSS feeds. It’s appeared on lots of blogs and forums and the genuine news article.
A number of folks have called it funny, but they claim that any patent application is funny or in some cases inhibiting. According to the unofficialgoogleweblog though, Google’s not listed as the applicant anywhere on the application. They said the listed inventor, Nelson Minar, is an engineer for Google.
So what gives? Is this Google’s patent or Nelson’s? I check out the patent myself and based on the way this application reads, even though Google is mentioned a couple of times in the thing, I’d say Minar is the man with the RSS ad plan. He could quite possibly license this thing out to whoever would like it, be it Google, Yahoo or any company handling this business.
The abstract on the application:
Incorporating targeted ads into information in a syndicated, e.g., RSS, presentation format in an automated manner is described. Syndicated material e.g., corresponding to a news feed, search results or web logs, are combined with the output of an automated ad server. An automated ad server is used to provide keyword or content based targeted ads. The ads are incorporated directly into a syndicated feed, e.g., with individual ads becoming items within a particular channel of the feed. The resulting syndicated feed including targeted ads is supplied to the end user, e.g., as a set of search results or as a requested web log. Embedding of targeted ads into syndicated feeds and/or user response to the embedded ads is be tracked in an automated manner for billing. The automated targeting and insertion process allows ads to be kept current and timely while the original feed may be considerably older.
The patent process can take a fair amount of time so it will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
