It has been a long time coming, but good news has finally arrived. From next week Feedburner which was recently acquired by Google will start rolling out to a select number of publishers, Google Adsense for Feedburner.

While this is good news and will allow Feedburner publishers to add an additional source of income, the bad news is, unless you’re a publisher with thousands of subscribed readers; don’t expect to earn much the program. Past research has shown that ads in RSS Feeds generate a very low conversion rate.

The feedburner blog says the following:

So what will this mean for you? Well, publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content, with the added revenue that full back-fill coverage provides. And with AdSense, you'll know that your back-filled ads are using the strongest contextual ad engine, ensuring the most relevant and profitable ads are delivered to your subscribers. And yes, ads are also sold via Google's AdWords program.
For publishers who are not yet placing ads in their feeds, any publisher who meets the requirements to join the AdSense program will also be able to use AdSense for feeds. You will be able to manage your feed ad units directly from AdSense Setup tab, and track performance right on the AdSense Report tab. You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content units, or keep them totally separate. You're in control. You can still control the frequency and rules around when ads appear in your feeds, without having to mess with templates on your content management system.