Re: Advertising in RSS feeds

On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 11:56:26AM +0100, Ian Davis wrote:

> <rss:channel rdf:about="blah">
>    <rss:title>Recipe of the Day</rss:title>
>    <ad:advert rdf:resource="#advert"/>
> </rss:item>
> 
> <ad:Advert rdf:about="#advert">
>    <rss:title>SpoonShop - spoons for all your needs</rss:title>
>    <rss:link>http://spoonshop.com/buy-spoons.html</rss:link>
>    <ad:button rdf:resource="http://spoonshop.com/button.jpg"/>
>    <ad:banner rdf:resource="http://spoonshop.com/banner.jpg"/>
>    <ad:publisherLink rdf:resource="http://adagency.com/"/>
>    <ad:agentIdParameter>agent</ad:agentIdParameter>
> </ad:Advert>
> 
> The agentIdParameter is the name of a URL query parameter that the agent 
>   should append to the clickthrough link and the image urls. The value 
> of this parameter would be some sort of affiliate ID specific to the 
> publisher. The author of the agent would have to have some sort of 
> account with the publisher of course.

As soon as you make the adverts external to the feed, you get into
advert rotation through the publisher's ad server (which is a good
thing, because it makes this manageable). Some of the main ones won't
play well straight off with a fixed mechanism for making up query
strings - some use query strings already.

It's a good idea, though. Some publisher ad servers can record
keywords in their serve and click requests and then generate a report
based on that at a future date, but that does require URL mangling of
a more extreme form. Given that the agent will have to be configured
for the affiliate token, I wonder if varying the feed for each
affiliate is going to be impractical - it certainly solves these
problems. An alternative might be to have an agentReplaceToken, so
<rss:link>http://pub.com/click/spooncampaign/AGENT/....?whatever</rss:link>
would just need a quick strreplace to get the affiliate-specific URL.

Incidentally, I'd recommend not having ad:button, ad:banner etc. (for
a start: what size is a button?). We should perhaps look at the IAB
'universal' ad package, and either take their lead on names (they seem
to be getting good adoption) or (my preference) go for something like
<ad:image width='xx' height='xx' rdf:resource="..."/> (or however it
would look in RDF), and let the agent choose which to display.

Oh, and 'publisherLink' is a strange thing to call a link to the
agency :-)

James

-- 
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
  James Aylett                                                  xapian.org
  [email protected]                               uncertaintydivision.org


 
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