The folks over at the Search Engine Roundtable have noticed a post by Google employee Matt on the Feedburner Help Group confirming that the FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN) has effectively been shut down.

UPDATE (15 August): Google seems to have opened up AdSense for Feeds for all, according to Google Operating System.

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.

While this is hardly an unexpected and logical decision, I’m left wondering if these publishers are actually in the know, since the FeedBurner blog post announcing integration of Google AdSense for Feeds didn’t mention an actual shutdown of FAN. I’m also not that sure if those publishers really see AdSense for Feeds as a viable alternative? For Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, the switch proved to be disappointing (video).

FeedBurner remains one of the strongholders of RSS feed management, even if we showed how the numbers of subscribers they report can be easily manipulated. Good alternatives for monetizing RSS feeds include Yahoo, Pheedo and Text Link Ads. Feedster, on the other hand, died some time ago.

(Thanks to Marjolein Hoekstra for the hat tip)