I have been a huge fan of FeedBurner, RSS feed management company, for a really long time. Yes, before Google bought them and even before they had most of their cool features. In any event, I noticed a Google Groups thread, where FeedBurner announced that they have stopped accepting new publishers into the FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN).
Matt S. of FeedBurner said:
This is a quick note to confirm that FeedBurner's former, independent ad network, FeedBurner Ad Network (aka "FAN"), is officially closed. No new applications for FAN publishers are being accepted and we expect the broad variety of options provided through AdSense (including the new AdSense for Feeds product, powered with FeedBurner feeds) will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential.
Yes, Google is going to push FeedBurner publishers into using the AdSense for Feeds solution. I personally never liked AdSense for Feeds because of the low payouts. But recently, in the past six months or so, FeedBurner's Ad Network (FAN) has been paying out about 10 - 25% of what they use to payout.
Approximately since April of this year, the payouts have honestly been a joke. Why? I suspect because the FeedBurner team is less interested in finding ad partners and more interested in pushing publishers into AdSense.
This may mean that in a few months, I might migrate off FeedBurner for RSS ads and take that in-house as well. If you run FAN, are you experiencing the same thing?
Forum discussion at Google Groups.