July 18th, 2005, 2:06 pm

Ads In, Ads out: the Struggle of Pull Publishers

Two stories floated to my attention today, and I can’t help but wonder how they are related.

The first: WashingtonPost.com will start ads in their RSS feeds. The second: TiVo — the aggregating technology that enabled users to avoid ads in the first place — is trying to market itself as an advertising vehicle — by inserting ad “symbols” or ID tags that would display even when folks fast-forward past them ads.

As news-sites increasingly become broadcasters (you know, RSS feeds, podcasted, e-mail newsletters); I think it’ll be increasingly important for us to pay attention to Lessons Learned from TV. So let’s review: We put ads in content; people didn’t like it, and flocked to an aggregator to get their content on their own schedule, and to strip out the ads. Now, the aggregator is trying to put the ads back in.

How long will it be before news aggregators start to strip out RSS ads as a service to their readers; and how long before they start putting them back in as a desperate attempt to stay afloat?