New York — Yahoo has instantly closed its Ads in RSS service, with effect from February 2, 2009, the service which allowed network publishers to place contextual advertising into syndicated content and get a portion of the action thanks to a revenue-sharing program.
However, there is not much information as to why — although this e-mail that was sent out to the network members:
Dear Yahoo! publishing partner, “We wanted to let you know that we are closing our Ads in RSS program effective February 2, 2009. We have ended this beta program to focus on other more broadly used ad products for our publishing partners, such as Sponsored Search and Content Match. We recommend that you remove current Content Match tags from your RSS pages.”
Yahoo refers to Ads in RSS as a beta program, since the program was introduced in November of 2005, its death comes as something of a surprise.
Now that Yahoo is backing out of the RSS advertising space, Pheedo, Text Links Ads’ Feedvertising and Google’s FeedBurner are just about the only ones left.
Of course, the Ads in RSS program was not as popular as Gmail, and that is probably where the problem lies in. Yahoo Pets and Yahoo Briefcase have also been cut in recent days, too; it may be that new CEO Carol Bartz is already trying to get rid of poor performers.
Nevertheless, Yahoo ended its message to users by saying, “Please be assured that we continue to invest in both our Sponsored Search and Content Match products and are excited about many upcoming improvements for 2009. We appreciate our relationship with you and look forward to working with you to grow our business together.”