Google has bought Feedburner, a web feed firm that lets online publishers constantly send updated content directly to readers, for a reported $100m (£50m).

The acquisition will allow the search engine giant to expand its online advertising into the fast-growing world of direct feeds to internet browsers.

Feedburner sends podcasts, weblogs, news and advertising to browsers using tools such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

More than 760,000 live feeds run through Feedburner daily, delivering content from some 430,000 publishers, including major news organisations.

Google says it wants advertisers to have access to the feeds and publishers on Feedburner, which would have access to Google’s other services.

As Feedburner also tracks what people are reading and watching and which ads are reaching their target, it could improve Google’s ability to target ads to online searches.

Last year Google achieved more than 99 per cent of its $10.6bn revenue from advertising.

Google is aggressively expanding its online content and advertising portfolio and has recently purchased online advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1bn (£1.5bn) in cash and YouTube for $1.65bn (£829m) in stock.