From Mediaweek (excerpt): “Google said that it has reached an agreement to acquire FeedBurner, a Chicago, Ill.-based company that provides a host of RSS feed services for publishers, including the delivery of contextually targeting advertising to RSS readers…Feedburner, launched in 2004, manages thousands of RSS feeds for publishers like Dow Jones as well as dozens of bloggers…Recently, the company launched AdClimate, a product that is designed to make RSS advertising more palatable to mainstream brands by letting them prevent their ads from appearing alongside any objectionable language that appears within an RSS feed…While RSS advertising is still a verdant market, this acquisition also provides Google access to a wealth of information on the habits of RSS users, something that likely made the startup firm that much more attractive to the search giant. In a statement on an official company blog on June 1, officials insisted that Google will protect the privacy of Feedburner users, and instead emphasized the advertising potential of RSS. “…We think we can create opportunities for advertisers to reach their target audiences while maintaining a high quality user experience.â€
Source:”Google Nets RSS Provider FeedBurner.” Mike Shields. Mediaweek. June 1, 2007.
PS: Here’s what Feedburner wrote about AdClimate on April 26, 2007 (excerpt):
“Warm Up To a Protected Advertising Climate
Today we announce AdClimate, a new feature of the formidable FeedBurner ad server for blogs and RSS feeds. AdClimate gives marketers and advertisers the power to suppress their ads from being served into content they might deem questionable… 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…
In the world of distributed media, brands need to be protected which is why the AdClimate concept has been met with very positive feedback from agency execs across the land.”
And via ClickZ: “The acquisition will give Google access to FeedBurner’s network of 431,171 current publishers to add to its AdSense network…”
Also from Online Media Daily: “FeedBurner has created an effective set of tools,” said Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management. In addition to the basic distribution, it offers strong analytics, promotion and monetization capabilities…The deal will give Google AdSense advertisers access to this new inventory… The idea is to integrate FeedBurner publishers deeply into AdSense and to create a highly integrated analytics package tying FeedBurner stats into Google Analytics, Wojcicki said.”
