Since there are a couple of interesting news items, I have consolidated them into one post.
The Blogging World is agog over the (confirmed) news that Feedburner is being bought out by Google for 100 million. My congratulations to the Feedburner team and the VCs who thought this was a good investment. However, I have also been reading some disturbing rumors/thoughts that Feedburner might inject Google Ads into feeds. I cannot see Google imposing this on Feedburner users but if they do, they will lose me as a user. I choose to keep my feeds ad free and I will look elsewhere.
Google is reported to be cracking down on websites and blogs that have little content and lots of ads (or made for adsense type websites, a form of arbitrage). The NY Post reports that a number of users have been notified of being dropped from the AdSense program. I feel that this policing is just the beginning and Google will only continue to try and keep their search results as clean and useful as possible. I do not think most bloggers have to fear if they have content.
I think it would be best if Google _help_ Feedburner users incorporate their [users] _own_ ads into their Feedburner feeds as it would be profitable to their users as well as themselves [Google].
Google Feeds has been in beta for some time. It’s designed to help AdSense participants incorporate their own ads into feeds. Acquiring Feedburner will help them complete the process. I see this as an optional thing, not something forced.
I believe Google is going to start expanding on their feeds ads (currently only some Adsense customers are trying out) business. What I feel is they might allow users to link their Feedburner account with their Adsense account (just like Blogger -> Adsense).
Who knows what might happen next. (:
Sorry. I meant Google AdSence for Feeds.
A small clarification, if you’ll forgive me… Very few MFA sites are about arbitrage. They’re usually designed just to get visitors from search engines and getting them to click.
PPC arbitrage is buying a visitor to a site by a click and (hopefully) passing them on to a higher-paying click.