VentureBeat

The RSS news of the day is that Kanoodle is expanding its RSS ad program to small and medium Web publishers. We were told this would be an important year for RSS advertising, and that looks to be the case.

But also noteworthy is the fact that Moreover Technologies of San Francisco, Kanoodle’s partner in this deal, is now offering an RSS feed management service. For now, it’s being marketed as an RSS ads service, giving Web publishers the ability to insert ads alongside the content they ship out in their RSS feeds. But Moreover CEO Jim Pitkow said FeedDirect could offer many of the same services available through FeedBurner, likely the most-popular feed management service in the blogging and small publishing world. (Pheedo of Walnut Creek is another feed management company).

“Basically, it’s FeedBurner done right,” Pitkow said.

RSS feeds are presenting a conundrum for Web publishers who rely on advertising. If they offer all their content in full-text RSS feeds, users have no incentive to visit the publisher’s actual Web site – and no chance to see the advertising on that site.

“The publisher now has a choice if they want to monetize their feeds as opposed to just the Web page,” he said.

Pitkow argues that Moreover has an advantage over other feed management services, namely its ability to make feeds available through its RSS distribution network. He says this could help increase the visibility of small and medium publishsers.