• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 14, 2005

Consumers using RSS readers are more likely to click on ads presented as stand-alone posts than on ads within posts--7.99 percent to 0.85 percent--according to research conducted this fall by RSS company Pheedo and set for release today.

As publishers continue to test the right balance of ad-to-content posts, Pheedo reports that one ad for every two articles yields the highest percentage of click-throughs. When an ad accompanies every other content post, Pheedo found, users clicked on the ads 3.24 percent of the time--over three times more than placing an ad with every piece of content, which results in a click-through rate of 1.04 percent.

Pheedo confirmed what many advertisers already knew to be true--that click-through rates vary significantly based on the day of the week. But contrary to earlier Pheedo reports, which showed peak click-through rates on Tuesday, now Monday and Saturday have emerged as the days with the highest click-through rates. Thursday and Friday show the lowest percentage.

Consistent with previous Pheedo reports, RSS readership rises steadily at the beginning of the week--peaking on Tuesday and Wednesday--and then declines through the weekend. Average weekend readership is over 67 percent lower than average weekday readership.

Among all RSS readers, Bloglines is the most used for Pheedo publisher subscribers, which is consistent with previous Pheedo data. With 34 percent penetration, Bloglines continues to overshadow Yahoo!, NetNewsWire, and Mozilla--each with about 14 percent reader penetration.