The Future of Feeding: Why the RSS Frenzy Isn’t Just for Media Anymore
Over the last two years, RSS feeds have been adopted by content publishers of all shapes and sizes — from individual bloggers to established media giants. RSS is being used by the online properties for media publishers in every segment — all of the top ten daily newspapers, many popular consumer and B2B magazines, and most broadcasters make feeds available to subscribers. The result is a rich media landscape that provides us with syndicated content that is informative and entertaining.
As consumer adoption of syndicated content continues to increase, marketers in a variety of industries are making feeds part of their standard marketing communication mix. Many of these companies take widely different approaches to the amount of content included in their feeds, the update frequency, and the navigation strategy behind incorporating subscription pages into their homepages. While it is typically unclear — and maybe irrelevant — whether the content is aimed at acquisition or retention, each of the ten companies listed below are engaging consumers via a new marketing communication channel — syndicated feeds.
Ford “Bold Moves”
Ford’s “Bold Moves” initiative is a brand documentary, tracing the history of the company, the evolution of makes and models, and its struggle to survive in a new world of global competition. The documentary includes audio and video segments. Episode 12 focused on Ford’s involvement in racing, while Episode 5 covered the first road test of the new Shelby GT 500.
Industry - Automotive
URL - http://www.foldboldmoves.com
Number of feeds - 1
Expedia
Expedia offers a level of personalization to their feed offering, by allowing the user to select from five types of feeds (flight + hotel; flight; hotel; cruise; deals) for 20 popular originating and 27 destination city pairs. The different combinations of selection criteria yield over 2,700 possible feeds. I subscribed to the “Chicago to Las Vegas” flight deals feed, which contained one recent post offering a discounted fare. A click on that headline linked me to a calendar page, conveniently showing me the days in the current month when the discounted fare was available. Expedia does an impressive job of tying its feed promotion to a familiar and highly useful page on the site.
Industry - Travel & Hospitality
URL - http://www.expedia.com
Number of feeds - 2,700+
Target
Target takes the red-and-white bullseye to syndication with the “Weekly Ad” RSS feed, offering subscribers an early preview of upcoming deals and a chance to “get a jump on Sunday’s paper.” Posts in the Target feed are SKU-level promotions, and a click on the headline takes the subscriber to a product listing page that includes “Add to Cart” buttons. If this product listing page is only accessible from feed subscriptions, Target will be able to attribute sales back to the feed, and build an LTV model for subscribers — similar to what most retailers do for their email recipients.
Industry - Retail
URL - http://www.target.com
Number of feeds- 1
Reader Comments.
- Pingback from Adotas » Kickstarting RSS: How to Make the Right Decisions to Reach Your Target Market
Comments Off
Pages: 1 2 next page »
Article Sponsor
More Features
-
Loading ...
Spotlight
Trust Me – I’m a Professional … SEOADOTAS — At WebMetro we typically provide SEO Action Plans as part of campaigns. As the name implies, an SEO [...] more...
Latest News
- Readers weigh in on ATT, ad networks and the iPhone July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — In our weekly poll, readers overwhelmingly said that [...] more »
- Hiring, promotions, location, partnerships and product news July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — Internet Oldtimers Foundation, Jumptap, eXelate, Kampyle, The Digital [...] more »
- OPA large ad units unfurl across the web July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The Online Publishers Association said a group of [...] more »
- Email spam in June worst since 2007 July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — MessageLabs Intelligence released its numbers for June, and [...] more »
- Joost becomes YouTube roadkill, starts layoffs July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — Despite reworking its technology to work in a [...] more »
- Ad networks, not websites, choked on Michael Jackson news July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The news of the pop star’s death saw [...] more »
- StrongMail doubling down on social media, buys PopularMedia July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — StrongMail has announced that it acquired PopularMedia, a [...] more »
Features
- Automakers Need to Become Better Conversationalists July 2nd 2009
- Affiliates can win in the media buy game July 2nd 2009
- Crowd-Sourced Ads: A Measured Response June 28th 2009
- Is the government coming for you? June 28th 2009
- Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It June 25th 2009
Reader Favorites
Layoff Tracker
- AOL - 700
- Apple - 50
- Clear Channel - 2,800 total (1,000 currently)
- Google - 340
- IBM - more than 7,800
- Joost - about 90
- MySpace - in June, about 720
- World Avenue - 30 percent of workforce
- Yahoo - 2,220 total, about 700 currently
- Zango - closes, about 90, in addition to earlier layoffs
Classifieds
Recent Comments
- Josette Davids: Great article and an amazing time was had by all at this event. I'm an
- Mike Poserina: There is also a tragic flaw rumored in Bing's ad placement engine. When resolved,
- Andy: Erin, Never mind the commenters who can only see the negative side of things. I thank you
- pkohler: We've also noticed that ads frequently adversely affects the performance of a Web page. As
