CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING: Blog Monetization

Contextual Advertising

Contextual Advertising is a relatively new form of advertising on the web that will consider the context of the site, a page or a search query, to display ads from advertisers that correspond to the topic. Its usual form is text-based, using regular hyperlinks, sometimes small graphics and brief descriptions to attract users that may be interested. It is usually highly targetted and is better accepted by users because it is less obstrusive, less bandwith hungry and more relevant than the classic graphical banners. For example, a web page about photography will automatically draw advertisers selling cameras and other photo related accessories. It also has the benefits of making the job of a web publisher easier to find sponsors, as the contextual advertising company acts as an automatic middle man between publishers and advertisers, who bid for specific keywords using an auction system. The same can be said for advertisers, since they now have access to thousands of possible web sites to automatically advertise on. It usually works as Pay per Click, meaning the publisher only generate revenues when a user actively click on an ad, as opposed to Pay per Impressions, an older system that generates revenue based on the number of time the ad is displayed.

Google was on the forefront of this innovation when they created Google Adsense, the first major contextual advertising program. In the beginning, these new ads appeared with their search engine, but they soon expanded it to include webmasters and their web sites, which they named their "Content Network". Using a few ligns of Javascript code, publishers could insert Adsense on their web pages and it would then automatically serve relevant ads using Google's search algorithm. Google also considers other factors such as the geographical location of visitors and their languages, so ads can actually be different for each visitor. Other companies followed with similar programs, but they lacked the sophistication of Adsense since they demanded specific keywords from webmasters instead of detecting them on their pages. Other big players on the web are now slowly embracing this terrific new marketing technology, such as the Yahoo! Publisher Network and MSN adCenter. Contextual Advertising is making it now possible for smaller webmasters and publishers who own small hobby sites to monetize their efforts without spending all their time dealing with appropriate sponsors that may not necessarly be interested with smaller sites when taken on an individual level.

Contextual advertising programs and Google Adsense Alternatives

Here we list companies that offer this marketing solution to webmasters. Google Adsense is often considered the prime choice, but they do have restrictions and some people may be refused to their program.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Blog Monetization – Contextual Advertising

In this article, we will be looking at one of the most popular forms of web advertising, contextual advertising. Contextual Advertising refers to the mechanism of displaying advertisements relevant to the content of a web page currently viewed by a visitor. This is done via automated systems that scan the page content looking for advertising keywords and then display relevant ads for those keywords.

The contextual ads come in two main types; on-page ads such as Google AdSense or pop-upnumber of clicks (Cost per Click – CPC) or the number of types the ad is displayed (i.e. impressions) (Cost per Impression – CPM).

The two terms CPC and CPM are named from the point of view of the advertiser and not that of the publisher of the ad. For example, each time a visitor clicks on a contextual ad, the corresponding advertiser has to pay some amount to the ad network. That is the cost the advertiser has to pay the ad network for that click. The ad network pays a portion of that cost to the publishers. ads such as Vibrant Media. The payments are either based on the