Google revs up RSS ads with FeedBurner buy

Google has acquired another medium for its advertising engine by purchasing FeedBurner, a company that distributes syndicated content for blogs and other media websites.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although the figure of $100m had been reported by TechCrunch, which broke the story last week.

Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in a conference call with reporters: "This is an area where we saw a lot of opportunity and that was growing quickly."

Google is the titan of paid search advertising and has a large network of websites that host ads it sells through its AdWords online marketing system. The company has been expanding aggressively into enabling offline forms of advertising, such as in print and on radio and television. Now it can put ads in the more than 430,000 RSS feeds FeedBurner has and it can expand its AdSense website publisher network with the FeedBurner publishers, Wojcicki said.

She said: "If you are a Google advertiser, now you can advertise on feeds that you otherwise may not have had access to," adding: "Our advertisers will have more access to [FeedBurner] publishers."

Google will figure out "interesting ways" it can integrate FeedBurner technology with its Google Reader, Wojcicki said.

FeedBurner helps publishers deliver RSS feeds, as well as manage the feeds, track usage of the subscribers and serve ads.

Dick Costolo, chief executive and co-founder of four-year-old FeedBurner, which is based in Chicago, said: "We can absolutely help raise the profile of this new distribution vehicle."

Google's FeedBurner acquisition may just be the tipping point that leads to widespread adoption of RSS and advertising in RSS feeds, said Bill Flitter, founder and vice president of marketing at Pheedo, a FeedBurner rival that feeds ads in RSS feeds.

He said: "There is a market for RSS and RSS analytics in advertising. Looking at ads in the feeds, as content moves outside of your site, you need some sort of revenue model. Google has Google Analytics, which makes a good fit with FeedBurner's analytics."

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com