CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING: Can You Really Monetize a Blog With Contextual Advertising?

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.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Can You Really Monetize a Blog With Contextual Advertising?

According to some people, the idea of monetizing a blog is nice, but the task is more difficult to achieve than expected. This kind of thinking is understandable, if not entirely true. Because although there are thousands of bloggers who aren't making a bean from their blogs, there are others who have managed to bring in hundreds and even thousands of dollars from theirs every single month.

It's true that some people object to advertising being in place on a blog. Since a blog is a personal journal about a specific subject, advertising can seem rather out of place. But why shouldn't bloggers earn some cash for their efforts - particularly if they have found a good audience to focus in on?

There are of course several different advertising models to look at, but people often find that the less intrusive ones work best on blogs of all kinds. That's why contextual advertising fits in so nicely with blogging. It doesn't look obtrusive on the page and the choice of whether or not to look at or click on the ad s is left to the person reading the blog itself. A popular contextual advertising method is In-Text advertising.

The main advantage of choosing an in-text contextual advertising network to deliver ads to your blog is that it leaves you more room for other things. You don't have to allocate a certain amount of room to put normal classified style ads on your page. Instead, the ads are linked neatly to whatever content you decide to write about. They take up no extra room at all.

And yet they can still deliver a good return, bringing in an income stream that can help to pay for your hosting costs and much more. This is the main reason why a lot of bloggers try different forms of advertising, to see which one brings in the best return for them.

Contextual ads are virtually guaranteed to deliver a good return since they will automatically appeal to the people on your site. If you have a regular audience you will benefit even more, since people often come back over and over again to a blog they like. And that means even more potential to raise your income from this form of advertising.

So is it about time you got some monetary rewards for your blogging efforts? If it is, give contextual advertising a try today.

Kontera is an In-Text ad network that offers contextual advertising to publishers across the web. Kontera's advanced contextual ad technology guarantees the highest degree of relevancy between content, keywords and ads.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Mika_Tal