Do Webfeeds Help or Hurt Site Traffic?

On June 3, Dave Winer wrote an article answering this question: Would a big media company lose traffic if they supported RSS? (RSS is one type of webfeed, and Winer was a key creator of the RSS technical standard.)

This piece a good, timely complement to my June 4 article, How Many People Read Your Webfeed?

Winer’s main point, with which I heartily agree, is this: “I don’t think that providing [webeeds], if you do it right, lowers traffic, in fact I think you can gain traffic.”

I both agree and disagree with Winer’s other points…

Winer assumes in this article that any “big media company” that distributes its content via webfeed would include in their feeds only links to articles on their Web sites with brief descriptions. Under this strategy, he says, “your [site] traffic stays even.”

…Well, maybe. Or maybe not.

In my estimation, traffic to the site’s home page would probably drop considerably, since (as Winer himself notes later in his article) webfeeds typically reproduce the home page content. For many news sites, home page ad space currently sells at a premium because it gets high exposure. The introduction of webfeeds would almost certainly have a negative effect on that important online revenue stream.

Revenue is everything in the media business. Most media companies would sacrifice the value of their home page ads only in exchange for a more lucrative revenue stream elsewhere. The obvious solution here would be ads embedded in the webfeed content – something that some online publications (such as InfoWorld) are now doing, with some success.

However, Winer doesn’t like webfeed ads. He says, “I recommend that you NOT put ads in the feed itself. A few pubs have experimented with this, and as a reader I don’t like it. I get the value when I read the full article, and there I don’t mind an ad, but the aggregator window is mine, I paid for it, I paid for the Internet connection, like seeing ads before a movie (a practice I abhor) it doesn’t seem fair for you to put ads in my space. And don’t forget, I can unsubscribe, so I’m not guaranteed to stay with you. Think of your feed is an invited guest in my house, so you should behave like a guest, and be appreciative of the priviledge. The payoff can be higher flow.”

I disagree with this perspective, pretty strongly. I think that webfeed ads can be a great idea and even a service to the reader – as long as they are clearly differentiated from feed content, low-bandwidth (preferably text-only), and do not overwhelm the feed content.

After all, like my feed reader (what Winer terms his aggregator window), my Web browser is my own. I installed it on my computer. I pay for the Internet connection through which I surf the Web. And I accept that there will be ads on many, if not most, Web sites. Big deal.

I really don’t see much difference between feed readers and Web browsers in this respect. Feed readers simply allow you to surf the Web in a different and more specialized way – by focusing on what’s new rather than what’s there.

Will some readers rebel against webfeed ads and unsubscribe from your feed because of them? Sure. But then, people will get offended and unsubscribe for almost any reason. They might not like that you use the final comma in a series, or that you use a dash instead of a semicolon. Fine. Whatever. There is no way to please absolutely everyone in your online audience.

Smart online publishers will realize that appropriate webfeed advertising can not only offset lost home page ad revenue but perhaps even outweigh it in the long run. Don’t discount the potential value of this emerging revenue stream simply because of anecdotal negative opinions. Experiment, and figure out what’s best for the majority of YOUR audience as well as for your own business model.

WEBFEEDS ARE AN OPPORTUNITY, NOT A FAD

Here’s another point on which Winer and I agree: Webfeeds are here to stay in the world of online media. They save time, they’re convenient, they’re versatile, they’re user-controlled, and they’re low-bandwidth. Most importantly, they’re spam-proof. Once people understand what webfeeds are and how to use them (which includes calling them by a simple name that appeals to non-techies), they tend to like them. Seriously, webfeeds are a new medium that Internet users of any level of experience can get into.

For major media companies, this means that it’s not a matter of whether they should start offering webfeeds, but WHEN. The sooner media companies start experimenting with it, the sooner they can determine the best way to use it to leverage and complement their business model.

It’s rather like the Web in that way. Remember when the big question for media companies was, “Why should we bother having a Web site?” Today the main answer to that question is, “Because we can make money off it, and it increases our exposure dramatically, and because people simply expect it – so we’ll look really stupid if we don’t have a Web site.” I’m sure that in a few years that will also be the common wisdom about webfeeds.

HOW IMPORTANT ARE “POWER BLOG” REFERRALS?

Bloggers are often quick to tout the PR value of being mentioned in weblogs – particularly their own. The most popular weblogs (“power blogs”) obviously have the most weight to throw around here. Winer’s weblog Scripting News is, indeed, a power blog – at least among programmers and other assorted techies.

On this front, Winer writes: “There’s a tremendous bonus possible by syndicating [via webfeed] because power-bloggers are likely to be [webfeed] subscribers. It’s an incredible word-of-mouth network.”

I agree with this, with some reservations. To a small publication or minor weblog, getting mentioned in a power blog would indeed be important and probably great news. In contrast, a major media company like the BBC or the Los Angeles Times that already attracts a huge general audience may be less excited by such coverage. It’s all a matter of context – particularly the relative size and compatibility of the respective audiences of the power blog and the media outlet.

However, I do agree that IF your publication or media company desires weblog coverage, offering a webfeed is an absolute must. In fact, in that case it’s probably best to offer both full-text and synopsis webfeed – despite Winer’s advice to stick with the synopsis only to preserve Web traffic. Many of the most popular bloggers (such as Robert Scoble) have stated that they will only read and link to sites that offer full-text webfeeds.

But here’s an even better idea: Where possible, relevant, and appropriate, media companies should mention and link to weblogs in their own content, and maybe even leverage trackback to support those links. Funny how this can result in substantially more buzz about your content in the blogosphere…

COUNTING READERS: SITES VS. FEEDS

The same person who posed the question that sparked Winer’s excellent article also asked, “Is it possible to track traffic on an RSS feed to know how many people are subscribed?”

I was disappointed that Winer didn’t address this hugely important matter in his article. For many online publishers and media organizations, this is THE key question about webfeeds. Their business models hinge largely on knowing the size and composition of their audience as precisely as possible. I hope Winer will address this issue in a later piece, I’d be eager to hear his suggestions.

I wrote plenty about this issue and the technical problems that have so far prevented a reliable solution in my article yesterday, How Many People Read Your Webfeed?

Ultimately, I believe that for online publishers who adopt an appropriate webfeed advertising strategy, it won’t really matter much whether their webfeed drains traffic from their Web site. They’ll still get paid by advertisers either way. Even if you offer full content by webfeed.

Whether people get your content via webfeed or on your site, they’re still getting it. And they’re still getting exposed to whatever advertising or other special content you choose to insert in either distribution channel.

The problem with webfeeds is that right now, in most cases, it’s not possible to know exactly how many people subscribe to a particular webfeed – and that’s an information gap that most people in the publishing business aren’t willing to tolerate.

But I’m sure some smart developer is working on a solution to this problem. It’s too important (and potentially lucrative) not to get fixed.

Dave – I look forward to further writings from you on these issues.

ALTERNATE PERSPECTIVES

Here are what some other weblogs have to say about Winer’s article, or on the general topic of media company adoption of webfeeds: