Pheedo Issues Pheed Read #4: A Look at RSS and the Auto Industry

Emeryville, Calif. (PRWeb) December 20, 2006 -- Pheedo, the RSS marketing experts, today released its fourth Pheed Read report, providing RSS publishers, advertisers and users insight into RSS usage and marketing analysis. The complete Pheed Read report and additional online auto publisher and marketing data is available on Pheedo's blog at www.pheedo.info.

Pheedo's analysis is based on the activity within its automotive category of RSS publishers and advertisers. The auto category consists of publishers of all sizes including The Car Connection, The Auto Channel, TopSpeed, Popular Mechanics (auto channel) and more. Future Pheed Reads will explore the usage data from other categories in the Pheedo Network including entertainment, technology and travel.

The following conclusions and analysis from the Pheed Read are based on traffic in the Pheedo Network during Fall 2006. Study findings include:

- Automotive enthusiasts are adopting RSS at an alarming rate and are extremely active:
The auto category has seen growth of 38% month over month, and more than 500% growth during the fourth quarter of 2006 to-date.

- Automotive content publishers prefer summary and headline feeds:
63% of auto publishers offer readers summary RSS feeds while the rest publish headline-only feeds. No auto publishers in the Pheedo network currently deliver their content via full-text RSS feeds.

- Auto enthusiasts prefer headline-only feeds:
Headline-only feeds garner a click-through rate (CTR) of 33% on content while summary feeds garner a 15% CTR.

- Yahoo! leads content aggregators among auto category readers:
The majority (52%) of RSS content readers across the automotive publishers in the Pheedo Network opt for Yahoo! RSS reader products, marking a departure from past Pheed Read data and trends in other content categories. Firefox placed second with 18% of the market share, while Bloglines, the top RSS reader in past Pheed Reads, came in well behind both with 7% market share.

The Pheed Read is released regularly by Pheedo and details trends in RSS usage. The auto category Pheed Read is the first in a series of vertical focused RSS usage studies to help publishers and advertisers understand their specific target market and to help inform their RSS marketing and publishing decisions.

"We offer our readers several ways to read The Car Connection content, and have seen significant RSS growth. Feeds have been a great tool to keep people tuned into The Car Connection, help drive additional traffic to our website and to monetize our content at the feed level," said Paul Eisenstein, publisher of The Car Connection. "The Pheed Read data is consistent with what we have seen in our RSS feed usage, and we are excited about the readership and marketing growth in the online auto publishing industry."

"We're entering a new phase in the growth and adoption of RSS as publishers and marketers start thinking about how to get more from their initial RSS efforts," said Bill Flitter, founder and VP of marketing of Pheedo. "From our detailed look at the automotive category in the Pheedo Network, it's clear that there are many untapped opportunities for publishers and marketers to both monetize and extend their RSS efforts. While the sites we examined are niche content providers, taken in aggregate they represent a highly-targeted, highly-effective medium for marketers to leverage the growing feed inventory."

Flitter continued, "Users are now interacting with RSS content as part of their everyday online lives, as evidenced by the growing popularity of Yahoo! as the RSS aggregator of choice within our automotive category. RSS feeds by their very nature are a social medium, and we recommend that both marketers and publishers look at RSS feeds as a central part of a larger social media marketing effort."

About Pheedo
Pheedo is the premier feed advertising network and we simplify the process of creating, producing, distributing and tracking advertising for RSS feeds. Advertising agencies, global corporations and premium online publishers of all sizes work with Pheedo to create successful RSS marketing campaigns. Pheedo arms publishers with the tools and knowledge required to understand, monetize and market their RSS content including data and analysis of content feed usage and consumer behavior. For more information, visit http://www.pheedo.com.

Contact:
Brett Weiner or Jeremy Frank
LaunchSquad
415-625-8555

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