FeedBurner Offers Ad Suppression for Questionable Content

FeedBurner has introduced a tool to prevent ads from being served against brand-sensitive content in its ad network.

Media buyers can use the feature, called AdClimate, to suppress ads that would previously have appeared next to unflattering content about their brands under the firm’s previous ad delivery system. They can do so by specifying keywords which, when they appear on a page, will disqualify that page from displaying an ad, like a blog post about a company’s product recall for example.

AdClimate also offers a more general filter for inappropriate content, such as vulgar language, across its network.

“It’s a frequent enough question for the average agency that we developed a product to meet the demand,” said Brent Hill, FeedBurner’s VP of advertising services. “We have a lot of independent authors and publishers still in the category of user generated content. There are a lot of brands that are not going to advertise [with those authors]… unless you give them some additional safeguards.”

FeedBurner manages about 700,000 feeds owned by 400,000 publishers, most of which use the platform to measure user interactions with their feeds and Web sites. However, while only about 7,500 of those properties, or 1 percent of the firm’s total publishers, authorize FeedBurner to sell their ads in its ad network, those sites represent about 75 percent of its audience reach.

The company represents inventory both in feeds and on Web sites, and 90 percent of campaigns running on its network have used both types of ads. FeedBurner reports a 15 percent growth rate per month in the number of feeds it manages.