RSS firm FeedBurner is moving beyond feeds, persuading bloggers and other publishers to display text and graphical ads (300 x 250 medium rectangles) on their sites, writes ClickZ. The ads are associated with content units, such as blog posts; publishers insert a line of code in their templates to participate. With its new initiative, FeedBurner will be competing with contextual ad players such as Google, Yahoo's Publisher Network and Kanoodle as well as blog ad networks.

Advertisers can run just site ads, feed ads, or both, and can target site ads - priced on a CPM basis - by content category. Apparently, publishers in the consumer electronics, computing and technology, and current affairs categories have signed up.

Feedburner's VP of business development Brent Hill said current ad formats on blogs don't take advantage of the content-rich middle column. "What happens is people scroll down the page more often on blogs," he is quoted as saying. "There's an opportunity there for marketers to intersect with consumers."