Content Ads Guide

Contextual advertising is one of the fastest growing online marketing methods. As consumers continue to do more of their shopping online we can expect more merchants to compete for their attention. This means that this advertising method is likely to continue to gain strength as a major method of advertising. The targeted and direct nature make it a very popular choice with merchants who are looking to squeeze the most value out of their marketing dollars. Never before has internet marketing been able to achieve this level of directness and consumer focus.

Who can use contextual advertising on their website? Any one with a website and some content. Content means not links or pictures but real word content. You need content on that website. You need to display ads. But you also need traffic likely to click those ads. There are several companies out there that offer contextual advertising programs. The number of contextual advertising programs is still increasing. Some of the big ones include Yahoo and Google. Although Yahoo contextual advertising is currently only open to US publishers. The Google program is the most used world wide. Microsoft arrived later but it could play an important role in this market.

Many websites that contain contextual advertising are hobbyist web sites that were not created for commercial reasons. Hosting contextual ads allows the web master to recoup his or her expenses and perhaps even make a profit from the web site. It also allows web masters to migrate from subscription based sites to free web sites.

How does it work? The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a java script into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script will pull advertisements from the Contextual program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout. This programs are all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best. One thing publishers must be aware is that is not as simple as placing the ads on the web site pages. This is a common misconception amongst internet marketers that can cause frustration and ultimately lead too many quitting with no success. There is actually work and strategic planning involved with you making money with Contextual Programs. There are not much secrets. You can learn from lots of articles on the internet or blogs and experimenting on your website. There are a lot of methods available to anyone who wants to use contextual advertising as part of their home business strategy.

Contextual advertising, also known as content targeted advertising, places relevant keyword-targeted ads on content pages to help advertisers extend their reach and target their audience profitably. Contextual advertising is used mostly for content-based websites. With contextual advertising a program or system automatically scans a webpage’s content for specific keywords or search strings and based on the results then returns targeted ads based on the page’s content. Contextual advertising is very beneficial for all kinds of content-based sites like news and publisher sites as well as sites of small businesses and even personal blogs. However for your website to maximize your profit from the contextual ads on your site your site’s content should be of good quality, meaning that it should be rich, relevant, and updated on a regular basis. A site with poor content and that uses contextual ads would most likely point its target audience to another site that is of better quality.

Publishers benefit from a new revenue stream, accessing thousands of advertisers they may have not otherwise had access to. The high degree of the ad’s content relevancy delivers a higher click-through rate than traditional online advertising, so better profit for publishers.

Search engines benefit as contextual ads have been a significant revenue generator. Contextual ads allow search engines to monetize something like 85% of pages on the internet.

Advertisers benefit from the additional sources of traffic and the ads run on the same web page as related subject matter. So there is a guarantee that the audience is interested in that kind of product or service. Advertisers are especially interested in using contextual advertising since it delivers targeted ads to a more receptive target audience.

For users, contextual advertising, improves the experience of navigation, by displaying useful ads, related to the subjects the user is interested in. For example, if you are visiting a Web page iPod reviews, the ads displayed on that particular Web page are related to iPod. 

There are three different types of contextual ads: separate ads that appear in specific areas on a page, inline or in-text contextual ads, or pop-up ads. Some recognizable contextual advertisers are Google’s Adsense and YPN. Inline contextual advertisers who are willing to pay top dollar for Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can have their ad placed at the top of the “sponsored listings” section of a search results page. In-text contextual advertisers, advertisements appear in the actual body text of a page and allow users to view the ad if they choose to click on the link.

Google annouced some exciting new features to AdSense. A new format was introduced - the 200 x 200 Small Square. This ad format supports text, image, and video ads and offers you yet another option of integrating AdSense in to your site. This new format should be very usefull to implement in some website’s design.

Another change is a newly designed Channels page under the AdSense Setup tab in your accounts. In addition to better organizing the channel data for each AdSense product within its own subtab, the new design makes it easier for you to take action on your channels. Just select the checkbox next to any channel and then choose to activate, deactivate, remove, or rename the channel as you please. One thing I don’t like is that now the channel name becames visible in the javascript code, and that could be revealing to some competitors. But be carefull you are not permitted to remove this single line as per the AdSense terms, since you are not permitted to change the javascript from what is generated within the AdSense control panel.

Microsoft Corp. is planning to launch its adCenter Content Ads program early this fall and is inviting a number of advertisers to test out the program, according to JenSense blog.

The contextual ads will be initially placed on Microsoft properties such as MSN Money, MSN Real Estate and Windows Live sites. adCenter Content Ads will use demographic and geo-targeting technology.

“Content Ads is Microsoft’s next product that allows advertisers to place content-targeted, text-based advertisements primarily on Microsoft-owned properties including MSN Money, Real Estate, and many others within the MSN portal. Like our search advertising product, it will also utilize our demographic targeting, geo-targeting and incremental bidding tools to help our advertisers reach the audience they want. Our Content Ads pilot will start as an invitation-only pilot, limited to selected current adCenter advertisers,” a Microsoft email statement read.

As publishers, we are waiting to see this new contextual advertising system being released.There is no information available whether or not Microsoft has implemented a more advanced click fraud proof system for the Content Ads. Well we can read that AdCEnter analyzes search patterns to improve the identification of invalid clicks. Recognizes different activity types and helps identify the differences between malicious, accidental, and valid clicks. AdCenter Uses campaign performance data to assist in identifying invalid click activity.