Targeted Marketing with Feedburner

One concern I hear raised a lot about advertisers placing their ads on UGC based websites such as MySpace is lack of control about the company they will keep. They could be placed next to anything! (Have they actually watched some of the commercial TV breaks and seen what can be found in the 3 minute slot???). Content channels then try and reassure them by placing some control, eg Revver monitors all videos and controls whether or not ads get placed and can target based on tags.

On blogs and feeds there has been very little choice made available. But now Feedburner is offering that service, providing ‘Adclimate – climate control for ads’

By way of example, let’s say you have an aversion to the word, “wingnut” and the thought of your ad for pinenuts showing up in a publisher’s blog post about the history of wingnuts would be totally unacceptable (hey – who are we to judge?) AdClimate to the rescue. In addition to screening a multi-language default list of inappropriate language, advertisers can submit their own list of keywords next to which they don’t want their ad to appear – wingnuts and all. AdClimate is the solution for that awkward adjacency issue that makes advertisers and media planners sink a little lower in their chairs (kind of like lumbar support, but without the foam cushion or unfashionable belt).

A win on two sides here; more advertisers will be prepared to take the plunge and bloggers are more likely to be able to make some money. However, the reader may be the loser here, depending on how frequently and how obtrusive the ads are going to be. A saving grace may be attention/contextual based, which may at least give you something useful.