CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING: Get Rich Quick with PPC and the Cadbury’s Gorilla

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.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Get Rich Quick with PPC and the Cadbury’s Gorilla

The song “In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins was originally released in 1981, but, thanks to that advert (which has nothing at all to do with chocolate!), the 26 year old song recently entered the iTunes top 10 downloaded songs. After many, many weeks, it still remains in the top 20. The secret of the songs success is no secret: Wildfire word of mouth catapulted the old song from the obscurity of Phil Collin’s back catalogue to sales that many current and heavily marketed artists would drool over.

What’s even more interesting about a bloke in a monkey suit playing drums is this: On Google.co.uk, the following 9 keywords…

Cabury’s gorilla
Caburys gorilla
Cadbury’s gorilla
Cadbury’s monkey
Cadburys gorilla
Cadburys monkey
Gorilla drums
In the air gorilla
In the air tonight gorilla

… were searched for 21,500 times in October, 2007.

So, who wants to get rich quick with the drum playing gorilla and PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising? I’ll give you the keys to the kingdom, but I want half. What you need to make your fortune is this:

Any old credit card.
A Word document that appears to be a reasonably authentic looking certificate. Take your time to carefully write the certificate’s text with a font like this: Authentic, Verifiable Certificate. Copy ‘n’ paste any images of gold ribbons from the internet to make it look more realistic.
21,500 photocopies of this document @ around 3p each (or maybe less if you can win a concession for a huge, bulk photocopying order!).
A shrewd, elementary website with a basic PayPal checkout facility, perhaps.

Create your simple Google campaign with its handful of monkey drumming keywords and ad text that screams:

“Buy An Authentic Certificate That Reveals/Unmasks You To Be Drum-Playing Cadbury’s Gorilla! Great Gift Idea, Buy Online Now”.

Use the credit card to fund the campaign (which should take about 15 minutes to build) with about £100 - £250 (average cost per click for the above 9 keywords was less than 5p).

Finally, set the campaign live — if the novelty value of a funny TV advert can sell chocolate bars and make Phil Collins hip again, surely it can convince people to spend £9.99 (or even £19.99??? if you were feeling adventurous) on a photocopied piece of paper … Ahem, ‘authentic certificate.’

Hmmm, and lets say there is a healthy 10% CTR and a modest 5% conversion rate for those 21,500 searches. Who wants to do the sums and tell me how much profit we could make? Answers in the comments section below, please!

Source : ClickConsult