Ad-versaries follow-up

As a footnote to my comments on RSS ads, I’d like to point out how Dave Winer points out the obvious about feeds:

Okay, now consider the other case, your feed only has summaries of your article (Example: NY Times). To read the full article you have to click on a link and (listen very carefully now) see an ad as you read the article. In other words, the RSS feed is itself an ad, pulling you in to read a page with a big ad on it. You want to put an ad on the ad? Okay, but it’s getting pretty thick. I might start feeling used and not like it, and unsub. In other words, think carefully about how much advertising you think your readers can endure.

Completely on point. If you think you need ads in your feed, it’s more likely you need to stop syndicating entire articles. So which do you do? Piss people off by putting ads in full content feeds, or by not giving them full content feeds and forcing them to come to the website? Ask yourself: who reads content solely in their aggregator? What gets the most ad impressions? Don’t you want people to come to your website in the end? And if you’re publishing ad-supported full feeds, shouldn’t you also offer ad-free summary or headline-only feeds? Wouldn’t that be the true test of RSS ad performance, if people have a real choice in the matter? Subscribe or don’t-subscribe is not a good benchmark of acceptance—some people may have an actual need for the content and can’t afford to unsubscribe.

I really wonder why this is such a hard concept for content folks to understand.