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Re: Time to add advertising to Atom?




On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 15:40:42 -0700, Walter Underwood <wunder@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I believe that an advertising marker should be in the Atom core or in an
extension published at the same time as the core.

I think it belongs in an extension. But both Atom and RSS needs it, unless we want the format(s) to be hijacked by advertisement agencies one year or so from now, when they realize that money can be made from the world of syndication.


1. Publishers need advertising, so we can't pretend it won't exist.

Indeed.


2. Many ad channels (Google, for example) clearly mark ads for the user,
so marked ads are acceptable to publishers. They may even be preferable,
because they avoid some kinds of inadvertant deceptive advertising.

True. Hence an attribute on the atom:entry element might be something content providers are interested in applying.


3. Automatic consumers(robots) need to be able to sort out the entries
from the ads. Ads mised in with search results is just not acceptable to
the users of search engines or profile services (pubsub.com).

Correct. If content providers think this is a problem; desktop aggregators might be able to just filter out all advertisements from real content, we can suggest a server-side mechanism that registers downloaded ads which again affects how much content you'll get delivered. Such a solution would need to be login-based, of course, but it's still a solution.


Ads as unmarked entries: This puts the responsibility entirely on the
client. Welcome to the spam filtering business, again.

Whohoo! No, I don't think this is a good solution. Not even for the ad agencies.


Ads as marked entries: Good for robots, also allows clients to display
a marker with the ads to distinguish them from other entries.

I think this is the best solution.


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Asbjørn Ulsberg    -=|=-     http://virtuelvis.com/quark/
«He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away»