Adding Google Adsense to Feeds

For some feed publishers, advertising is everything. When Google announced it's take over of Feedburner, many publishers hoped that this transaction would mean a free ticket to ride the Google Adsense rollercoaster of residual revenue. Since the announcement, however, Feedburner had a few false starts. Then, Big Papa Google came to the rescue! (Google loves it when you call them "Big Papa").

Finally, Google has fully integrated Feedburner as one of their services. Google Adsense has merged Feedburner into it's arsenal also. So, if you have been logging in to your Feedburner account by navigating to feedburner.com, you can now navigate to feedburner.google.com, instead.

For publishers who have previously used Feedburner.com to manage, track and optimize their feeds, the new process for combining ads with feeds may cause a raise of the ol' eyebrow. Some diehard Feedburner fans have gotten used to the idea of monetizing via Feedburner.com. And, well, feed publishers don't like change. But, fortunately for Google, feed publishers dislike being broke even more. It is projected that publishers will accept the new process for inserting ads into feeds. After all, when it comes to ads for feeds, publishers have seen it all.

First, Feedburner announced that it would allow publishers to monetize their feeds with ads by using the FAN feature within Feedburner.com. Using this process meant that the publisher would log in to feedburner.com and click the "monetize" tab. Under "Activate FeedBurner Ad Network and/or Google AdSense for Content" the publisher could then configure how he/she wanted ads to appear in the feed. The publisher would check the "Display ads from AdSense for Content" box, select the preferred color scheme, including Ad Size, Ad Position, Border, Title, Background, Text, URL, and Palette. Finally, the publisher could click "Save" to activate this service and get the HTML code to put ads on Blogger, Moveable Site, Typepad, Wordpress and other sites. Problem is, this process never worked correctly....I mean, it NEVA worked. Poor panting publishers have seemingly recovered from this regretful reality just in time to try the new improved process for importing ads into feeds.

Some publishers say that the process for inserting Google ads to feeds is decidedly less cumbersome. All one has to do is sign-up for a Google Adsense account by going to https://www.google.com/adsense.

If a publisher already has a Google Adsense account,he/she simply needs to log into it.. On your reports overview page under the "Adsense for Mobile Content" line, you will notice "Adsense for Feeds", click the "Get Started" link.

The "Get Started" page will look similar to the "Activate FeedBurner Ad Network and/or Google AdSense for Content" feedburner.com page discussed above (I suppose the shock would be too much for publishers if it didn't, eh?).

Near the bottom of the page, you will see an inviting link to gaining help and support for migrating your feed into adsense....or, visa versa. Ahem.

The process is quite 20^th century-like from here on out because the publisher must then email, adsense-support-aff@google.com his/her Feedburner account username and Google Account email address used to sign in to Adsense.

Google will respond via email with a lovely note similar to the following:

"Hello FabulousAndTechfilled.com,

Success!
Effective immediately, you can access your feeds by signing into your Google Account when you visit http://feedburner.google.com. You will no longer be able to sign in to feedburner.com, but that's okay: from now on, there is no reason to do so.

All of your feeds have been moved into this new account, and an initial batch of your most recent 30 days' traffic stats has been loaded up. (Your entire stats history, should it go beyond the last 30 days, will be added at a future date.)

To repeat: visit http://feedburner.google.com from this point forward to view and manage your feeds.

If you want to use AdSense for feeds, you may now do so. Visit http://www.google.com/adsense and click "AdSense for Feeds" under the Get Ads section to get started.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team"

From this email, publishers will get the distinct impression that it is mandatory that they log in to http://feedburner.google.com to manage feeds, or else *shakes fist*. That impression is quite accurate. Publishers will log in to http://www.google.com/adsense to use ads with feeds, however.

In instances like these, it's easy to imagine that Google is feeling the pressure to attempt to quickly corner the feed ad market. That is, although the newest process is promising, it is also sufficiently barbaric to expect publishers to manually set-up ads in feeds. (After all, this manual method amounts to at least 5 extra clicks...how dare they!)

But, seriously, while the manual set-up method for adding Adsense to feeds reeks of corporate urgency, publishers are clearly in position to reap the rewards. Source: FabulousAndTechfilled.com