The full page ad (FPA) is often misunderstood and abused, but when used properly can actually be appreciated by surfers. FPAs can vividly remind inform readers that, hey, we need to eat in order to continue to serve the content you’re reading right now. However, FPAs can and usually are extremely distracting.

Case in point: the RSS to FPA technique.

Here’s how this works: I read RSS almost exclusively by headlines. It’s like skimming the subject lines of emails. While this system is fallable, it affords me the time to read a large number of sources quickly. I can scan 350+ headline sources throughout the day while working with minimal disruption. So hitting somebody like me with a full page ad the minute I pick the headline out of the thousands I see daily is a huge faux pas.

Instead, readers should be brought to a clean page, something that looks like the entry pages of this blog, if you’d like a real world example. If I’d have read the article in a full aggregator I would not have seen the FPA, so why when I visit the website am I having to view it before seeing the content? Don’t punish RSS subscribers!

Now where would a FPA be effective and actually make sense? As I surf around and read more articles, the site could track my site session activity and intelligently drop in links to related FPAs. In other words, if I come in looking at a story about baseball, and then search for other stories about baseball, why not have FPA results there for me contextually (Adsense surely would) like tickets to local games, baseball merchandise, etc. This way the FPA becomes content.

Yes, the FPA should be labeled, disclosed in the ad itself and/or marked in a special category as advertising so that the reader realizes that they are, in fact, reading advertising. But if it is honest, personal endorsement advertising — an authentic testimonial — it can be extremely effective. If I say: hey, buy a PSP, then I just sound like a PSP pitchman, but if I say: hey, I just bought this PSP, check out all the screenshots, and then I bought this game, check out the screenshots for the game and what can be done and you can buy it from ___ here, well that’s a whole different game (pardon the pun).

Some news site are making the ad content so utterly intrusive that the news is barely readable. This is another reason why I’ve switched almost exclusively to RSS headlines for most news and then “brave the wild” when clicking through. I hope when the RSS ad revolution rolls in that they will make these ads contexual and not go off to some sucky non-content type ads. I greatly prefer content ads over non-content ads. Don’t send me directly to a shopping cart page, send me to a FPA with testimonials, pictures, supporting information … from that type of page send me to the shopping cart.

I support FPA and advertising on websites. Heck, look around here. But there isn’t any of the actual blog content you see here that can’t be consumed in the RSS aggregator of the reader’s choice. Give us readers choices, make it easier for us, and at the same time passively and contexually advertise to us and we will buy from your site. Many will be grateful that you’ve helped them find good deals.

And speaking of good deals — here comes one for webmasters, bloggers, etc who use Google Adsense — there’s only 17 days left from this writing to take advantage of the MakeYouGoHmm April 2005 special reader deal on the Google Adsense Revenue Checker. I’m not just making some lame, I’ve never actually used it before pitch here, I really do like and use this program every day … it’s sitting in my system tray right now, checking my Adsense stats every few minutes. All I have to do to see where we’re at is hover my mouse over the icon. I’m surprised that at last night’s Skype Meetup I didn’t mention this great tool to Stuart, Bill or Charles. Think I might just send them a Skype chat message about it right after posting this.

Also, the author of the program has made three free upgrades to the program since I wrote that eight days ago. He is clearly committed to making this an essential tool for Adsense affiliates.

If this special deal goes over well (it is, so far), then we will probably be offering other frequent special reader deals on software and web services. I’m signing up for and buying stuff online all the time. If I buy something and like it, then I love the idea of being able to pass along a good deal to friends, family, associates and readers. I can’t shut up for long about something that I like. Especially tools like this that give us back time.

• Regnow starts taking Paypal
• Regnow fubar
• Transparent Adsense posts
• Google Adsense offers alternate ads
• Caution advised in over advertising
• Adsense API to allow multiple account sharing on websites