This panel at the Syndicate Conference addressed how RSS can be used to generate leads, customers, and eventually, money.
RSS: Market Intelligence and Lead Generation
Moderator:
Mark Carlson, CEO, SimpleFeed, Inc.
Speakers:
Owen Van Natta, Vice President, A9.com, Inc.
Greg Reinacker, CTO & Founder, NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
Bill Flitter, Chief Marketing Officer, Pheedo.
Greg Reinacker points to the Kryptonite case as a company that should have been monitoring feeds, subscribing to anything with the company name, so it could have seen what was going on and respond quickly.
Bill Flitter says that RSS feed advertising is so relevant because the user chooses to subscribe and can unsubscribe at any time, so that person truly wants this content.
Owen Van Natta talks about A9’s OpenSearch leveraging RSS to provide new, searchable content.
Greg was asked by Mark Carlson, the moderator, why anyone would want to pay for RSS feeds. He explains that they provide a premium service, sending feeds to mobile devices and media center PCs, use cases where you can’t use a standard feed.
Responding to a question, Bill said that RSS ads have, for companies he’s worked on them for, have reduced the cost of customer acquisition by half, since the audience is so well targeted. He says that it is very important to “get this one right”, and not work against the consumer.
Owen says the reason Amazon has gotten involved in search is because so many of its products are sold after a search, and the challenges continue to rise. They feel that current search is an unsolved business, and that they need to get involved to improve it. Additionally, they can leverage the over 70 million people with Amazon accounts to make better search. They believe that since customers already trust Amazon in ways that it might not trust other search sites, they can provide value for that trust to help people find things they want.
Bill was asked about Google’s new feed advertising program, and how it affects their business. He says it is not an issue, because Google is helping monetize feeds, but they are providing a beneficial service.
Greg asked Bill what he thinks about aggregators stripping out ads. Bill said that if one of the top companies would decide to do that, there could be legal issues, as it is stripping out content. He also notes that they will not be putting traditional ads in RSS, like banners and skyscrapers, because that just doesn’t work for feeds and what users want.
Greg talks about authenticated feeds, and says that it shouldn’t be a problem. They’ve solved it, even in the web-based service, and there’s no reason feed readers should have a problem.
Owen said “Google showed how much better search could be”, but it still has problems, especially spam. There is a lot of opportunity to improve, and a constant need to stay ahead. Additionally, there is information not normally available that they can try to be able to search. He adds that one thing Jeff Bezos, their CEO, likes to say is that, even though Amazon is pretty good today, “It will never be as bad as it is today”, that they will continue to improve.
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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