Google has filed a patent application for serving targeted ads in RSS (and other) feeds, and the US Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday assigned it patent number 20050165615, reports IO ERROR (via Slashdot). The patent application was filed December 31, 2003.
The patent application, titled "Embedding advertisements in syndicated content," was filed under the name of Nelson Minar, an AdWords employee in San Francisco. The application describes RSS, Atom and XML targeted delivery methods and discusses geotargeting based on the location of the user receiving the syndicated content.
Google is now beta-testing its AdSense for feeds program, which serves targeted ad content from AdWords.
The full (unedited) text of the patent application's abstract follows:
"Incorporating targeted ads into information in a syndicated, e.g., RSS, presentation format in an automated manner is described. Syndicated material e.g., corresponding to a news feed, search results or web logs, are combined with the output of an automated ad server. An automated ad server is used to provide keyword or content based targeted ads. The ads are incorporated directly into a syndicated feed, e.g., with individual ads becoming items within a particular channel of the feed. The resulting syndicated feed including targeted ads is supplied to the end user, e.g., as a set of search results or as a requested web log. Embedding of targeted ads into syndicated feeds and/or user response to the embedded ads is be tracked in an automated manner for billing. The automated targeting and insertion process allows ads to be kept current and timely while the original feed may be considerably older."