Google's Feedburner Burns Me

Okay, I have to say, even though someone kindly mailed me a Blogging For Dummies book, and even though I read that entire book, including the chapter about Feeds, I still don't understand the concept.

As in what is the point of burning a feed? And why do people subscribe to a feed? Rather than just going directly to a blog, if you like that blog?

Soon after I started this blog I, to use the vernacular, burned a feed of this blog, using Feedburner. At that point in time Google had not yet acquired Feedburner.

Feedburner had a 'monetize' option. It seemed easy to set up. You could use your Google AdSense code. However, Feedburner had you adding code to your blog layout. This was totally screwed up. It did not add the ads to the Feedburner feed. Instead it messed up the ads in the blog. So, I removed the code from the layout.

Time passed and Google bought Feedburner. I was then told I could manage Feedburner ads from my AdSense account. So, I did so. I enabled ads for feeds. But the ads still did not show up in Feedburner. They showed up in the html code for Feedburner. You could see the space where the ads should appear. But no ads appeared in the feed.

But. The Google ads do appear in other feeds. Like Google's News Reader. Why does Google have both Feedburner and Google News Reader? I can't help but wonder.

Are some Feedburner geeks annoyed at being eaten up by the Google monster and retaliating by messing up the Feedburner code?

Another Feedburner thing that bugs me is the number of subscribers. The number goes up and down, constantly. Yesterday it was 47, today it is 45. 45 subscribers? And that's just with Feedburner. And yet when I look at my AdSense account, like I just did, it shows there were only 6 Feedburner page impressions. So, I've got 45 Feedburner subscribers, but of those 45 only 6 pages were looked at? I don't get it.

Anyway, can anyone enlighten me out of my ignorance regarding this Feedburner conundrum?