As Google, Feedster, Yahoo and Pheedo offer ad options in RSS, and companies like Verizon are testing the RSS waters, consumer use of the technology is growing, reports the New York Times (via MediaBuyerPlanner.com).

Visitors to nytimes.com via its own feeds, for example, have soared from about 500,000 a month at the end of 2003 to 7.3 million last April, said Toby Usnik, the Company's PR director. And Microsoft has announced that it will integrate RSS into its next operating system.

Charles M. Smith, president and COO for Pheedo, told the Times that advertisers currently pay 50 cents to $1.75 per click for Pheedo ads, which Pheedo and the publisher of the content in the feed share. In tests of various RSS ads, he says, longer, 500-word ads work better than the 100-word ads of search marketing fame.

Sites that offer feeds as an ad in itself, sending headlines meant to drive traffic back to their site, may be missing the boat, as research is now showing that RSS users often look only at the feeds, not the sites from which they are sent, the article reports.