Google RSS ads have a long way to go

Duncan Riley> The blogosphere is buzzing about the inclusion of RSS ads on Jason Calacanis’ Weblogsinc network, but I’m yet to see anyone take notes on the actual ads they are serving up, and at this point I’ve got to say, they have a long, long way to go to actually meet any expectations of contextual advertising and to provide a worthwhile service.

A scan through my Weblogsinc feeds this morning resulted in nearly all RSS ads being titled “Get Paid to Take Survey” for the site clicksurveys.com. Of the 20-30 or so posts, I could find only two different ads, one for Google competitor Mamma, and an ad for beating adwords.

The great thing about Google’s Adsense program that in delivering advertising to blogs, the ads are relevant to the users and in many cases can actually add to the viewers experience. What’s currently being served up in the RSS ads this morning on the Webloginc feeds (I subscribe to Jason Calacanis, the Unofficial Google and Yahoo sites) was not only irrelevant to what I was reading, but a complete and utter waste of time and space as well. I’d be interested to see what sort of traffic Calacanis gets from the exercise, and to some extent there will also be some novelty click thrus as well (yes, I clicked on one just to see that it worked), but if this is what’s dished up I can’t see a lot of extra money being made by a company that already does $1400 a day in Adsense advertising.