• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, November 15, 2005

In a further sign of momentum in the RSS advertising space, Pheedo, a blog and RSS ad network, today officially unveils its RSS analytics service.

Similar to e-mail analytics, Pheedo's service looks at open and click-through rates for articles and ads that publishers send to online users via RSS.

Last week, Pheedo rival FeedBurner, which also offers RSS analytics, unveiled a new RSS ad network. Also last week, RSS ad network operator Feedster automated the sign-up process for publishers.

Pheedo started offering a beta version of the analytics product six months ago. The company has tested it with about 50 advertisers and 50 publishers, Bill Flitter, Pheedo's founder and vice president, marketing, said.

One finding to come out of the testing is that RSS ads between 200 and 250 characters appear to be more effective than either shorter or longer ads. When ads are smaller, Flitter said, they don't provide enough information; more characters, and they detract from the editorial content.

Pheedo also found that ads got higher click-throughs as stand-alones than when they came after content in feeds. But, Flitter said, publishers resist serving ads by themselves in RSS feeds.