MessageCast, a desktop/mobile RSS alerting tool, plans to launch context-appropriate ads for RSS feeds via a new keyword program that sorts feeds into categories that can be purchased by marketers.
Deborah Branscum has the scoop and more info here as well.
From Deborah Branscum at the Stuffola blog:
MessageCast, Blogging, RSS, Advertising and Cold, Hard Cash
MessageCast wants to win the hearts of bloggers as well as corporate clients. During Friday’s telephone conversation, MessageCast head Royal Farros told me his company is still working out its business model but plans to pull in advertising revenues by wooing bloggers to LiveMessage. Then he gave me the goods in a Stuffola exclusive. The idea is that MessageCast will add context-appropriate ads to RSS feeds. Nope, that’s not the news. (You knew that.) The news is that by the third quarter of this year, MessageCast plans to roll out a keyword program that should be as attractive to the folks who read blogs as it is to the folks who create them. How? By sorting single RSS feeds into categories.
The keyword program is for people like Robert Scoble, says Farros. (I didn’t come up with this example, Robert, honest.) A commercial service like Marketwatch provides a variety of topic-based RSS feeds for readers but many (most?) bloggers, including me and the Scobleizer, use software that publishes a single feed that encompasses all the items we blog. What LiveMessage keywords will do is allow a loyal but time-pressed reader to be alerted whenever Robert mentions, say, Microsoft or Firefox or his upcoming book. According to Farros, the LiveMessage keyword program “will allow you to be able to type things in and then well be able to parse the RSS feed and say, ‘This says Firefox. Get this to Deborah.’ “
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
