RSS ads that are standalone feed items generate a click-through rate (CTR) of seven percent - more than nine times the CTR of RSS ads displayed in content feeds - according to a study by RSS ad firm Pheedo, writes ClickZ. One likely reason for the better performance of standalone ads is that on Pheedo's network they are content-heavy and branding - rather than direct-response - oriented. "We're trying to find what's the perfect ad unit for RSS," Bill Flitter, Pheedo's VP of marketing, told ClickZ.

The study also considered frequency, finding that an ad in every other post was most effective; doing so garnered a click-through rate of 3.24 percent, whereas an ad in every feed resulted in a 1.04 percent CTR.

Regarding RSS content click-through - clicking from a summary feed to the full web content - Pheedo found that Mondays and Saturdays were peak days, with Thursdays and Fridays the slowest ones. For feed readership, Tuesday and Wednesday were the peak days; on weekends, readership is 67 percent lower than the weekday average.