Content Ads Guide

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.

Affiliate marketing is promoting a web-based business. When the visitor you refer from your website subscribes or becomes a customer of site, the affiliate is paid either a percentage of the sale or for the lead. Affiliate programs are attractive to the merchant because they only pay if the campaign is successful. In other words, their return on investment is guaranteed. Affiliate marketing reportedly was the brainchild of Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. The story goes that he was at a dinner party and was approached by a woman who wanted to sell books on her website. Bezos idea was that he could link the woman to Amazon and could pay the woman a commission for the books she sold. That idea later became known as the “Amazon Associates Program” and linked associate websites to Amazon through the use of a banner ad. Affiliate marketing works effectively for the merchant and the affiliate. To the first, he gains opportunities to advertise his products to a larger market, which increases his chances to earn. The more affiliate websites or hard-working affiliates he gets, the more sales he can expect. By getting affiliates to market his products and services, he is saving himself time, effort and money in looking for possible markets and customers. When a client clicks on the link in the affiliate website, purchases the product, recommends it to others who look for the same item or buys it again, the merchant multiplies his chances of earning. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer benefits from each customer who clicks on the link in his website and who actually purchases the product or avails of the service provided by the merchant. In most cases, the affiliate gets commission per sale, which can be fixed percentage or fixed amount. Read the rest of this entry »