donloeb.com

great npr story about luis da silva….he’s 19 and now famous. and, btw, this is entertaining advertising :)

today’s links:

- cage-free egg shortage!

- newspapers are screwed…or no, they’re not? plus, media tribes from jeff jarvis…

- great facebook newsweek profile and new facebook ad network from videoegg

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first off, congratulations to jz, arun, traci, jon, steve, and everyone else…i’m terribly impressed with our team - they pushed this out in record time…

so, what exactly are self-serve feed-powered ads? well, this new service enables publishers to create “live” ad units - i.,e take a custom background image or standard banner and then use feed content to automatically update the ad creative. we’re essentially allowing publishers (of all shapes and sizes) to use the existing headline animator service to develop and then traffic dynamic ad units…

why is this significant? two reasons…(1) it’s super easy for any of our 500k or so publishers to produce compelling creative that doesn’t need to be changed (the ad updates when the feed changes), and (2) these ads are “useful” and fit the feed-reading experience (note: these are not contextually targeted ads). for example, if i’m reading valleywag (yeah, i’ll admit it), i’ll start to see feed-based ads from other publishers (big and small). since i’ll be in “reading mode,” these ads should act as content discovery units…i can then click to preview the content, and if i like what i see, go to the site or subscribe to the feed (of course)…

here are a few examples…

btw, these ads can also be published to web pages and virally spread (see the “grab this” links)…and, we track these headline animators (err…widgets) across the web…

lastly, here’s an older post i wrote on feed-powered ads…

we can finally talk about this…yes, the rumors are true…we’ve been acquired by google. i’m terribly excited as we have the opportunity to leverage their resources and relationships…this is great for our publishers (both big and small) and the future of rss / distributed media…

we’ll have more information soon re what this means for everyone…so stay tuned…

logo courtesy of google blogoscoped

today, we’re very proud to announce that SFGate is using FeedBurner and is now part of our ad network. they join a bunch of other new FeedBurner customers - AOL, bizjournals, thestreet.com, npr, circuitcity, etc…

so, subscribe. i’m particularly fond of the following feeds: the daily dish, politics blog, tech chronicles blog, mick lasalle - movies, food & dining, green, tom stienstra - outdoors, sfgiants, and of course, cal football podcast…

couple of great announcements re thestreet.com and a slew of new york centric publishers - congrats rick, eric, and jake! these follow last week’s bizjournals release…when it rains it pours…

we’re happy to announce that american city business journals has joined the feedburner ad network. so, not only are we managing all of their feeds, but we’re now helping them monetize their content in distribution. also, they are using feedflare to allow their users to email, save, and share content…ahhh, the overused, but important…social media optimization :)

btw, you may not know american city business journals or bizjournals.com, but i’m sure you’ve seen their local business publications…i.,e print pubs. and, you’ve probably read their content somewhere on the web via yahoo, msn, etc. they are the source for local business news across the country. so, go ahead, subscribe to their feeds…

update #1 (2/28/07) - we are now providing stats on how these widgets are being consumed across the web - in email, rss, on myspace, etc.

update #2 (8/1/07) - we now have self-serve feed-powered ads.

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lots more to say about this later, but fred wilson wrote a short note about this today (thanks fred!)…and, here’s his first try at a “live ad.” while pretty cool and not bad for 5 minutes - clearly, he’s not a designer by trade :)

my post from yesterday on spiderman3 (official blog from sony pictures) has a better example of something that might work as an actual ad…they created it to cross promote their blog on various other sony pictures sites…

and, the average joe might create something simple like my “ad” below…i created it to put a badge on my myspace profile…yeah, i need a better picture….

any feedburner publisher can now easily make these…so, go have some fun with our new headline animator! btw, as you can tell from my frequent posts on this new product, i love it…

we’re very happy to have the wall street journal, marketwatch, and barrons join the feedburner family…here’s their press release and our blog post…

everyone (raanan, maria, etc.) at dow jones has been great to work with. they truly understand syndication and social media (as evidenced by their widespread adoption of blogs, rss, podcasting, and social services like sphere, digg, delicious, and facebook).

In addition, by utilizing FeedBurner’s “FeedFlare'’ service, Dow Jones Online is able to help users interact with content by leveraging popular social sites like digg, Sphere and http://del.icio.us. FeedFlare adds simple one-click links to each feed item, making it easy to build “interactivity'’ into the content and making it simple for RSS subscribers to tag, email or share their content with others.

“Our adoption of FeedFlare, coupled with FeedBurner’s growing suite of tools that leverage RSS, will yield tremendous benefits for our audience and advertisers,'’ said Raanan Bar-Cohen, director of product strategy at Dow Jones Online. “Working with FeedBurner gives us the ability to rapidly test and deploy integrated offerings in our feeds, providing the flexibility and speed that is critical in today’s media marketplace.'’

of course, they are also going to use feedburner for monetization :)

now, go snack on some feeds! wsj, marketwatch, podcasts…

love the latest post re our ad network…not a bad set of relationships and the inventory is definitely headed in the right direction ;)

and, adotas’ take on our release isn’t bad:

RSS feed management and advertising company FeedBurner has increased its customer base by 300% over the past six months, giving feed advertisers more than enough blog, news and website feeds to play with this holiday season.