MarketingVOX: Some ads placed in RSS feeds are garnering higher click-through rates than most standard online image ads, writes ClickZ, citing the "Pheed Read Spring 2006" report from Pheedo. The average CTR of standalone RSS ads is 2.76 percent, while inline RSS ads - those within a feed post - are averaging a 0.45 percent CTR. According to Pheedo's December 2005 report, the CTR of standalone RSS ads averaged 7.99 percent, and inline feed ads averaged 0.85 percent.

Pheedo says feed ad CTRs will continue to normalize, but Pheedo VP of Marketing Bill Flitter said "it will be a much, much less significant drop going into the next quarter."

Ads placed within Comics and Humor, Travel, and Kids and Family categories of feed content spurred the highest average CTR at 9.62 percent, 8.54 percent and 7.61 percent, respectively. Games, Arts and Literature, and Sports and Recreation came CTRs were more than 4 percent; Politics and Consumer Technology averaged less than 1.5 percent. Pheedo says most RSS feed advertisers fall into the Auto, Consumer Electronics and Finance categories.

Meanwhile, clickthrough rates for the RSS feeds themselves (not the ads within them), according to Pheedo, were in the 10-12 percent range. Full-text feeds and summary feeds garnered similar CTRs, 10 percent and 12 percent, respectively. The median CTR for full-text feeds remains at 10 percent, while summary feeds drop to 8 percent CTR due to high CTR rates in certain categories and individual feeds.

According to Pheedo, 90 percent of RSS consumers opt to read the feed content entirely in the aggregator environment, regardless of whether they are viewing full or partial feeds. It concludes that this phenomenon presents an opportunity to monetize the feed content at the feed reader or aggregator level.