Learn more by reading PPC Blog today.

Check out these Link Building tips

Contextual Ads

What are Contextual Ads?

Search engines sell ads near their search results. To increase their available ad supply some of the major search engines have partnered with many various websites to accept ad partners.

How Does Contextual Advertising Work?

Search engines can read file names, look at linkage data, page titles, and page content to understand the meaning of a page. If the page content is not yet read generic sitewide ads or alternative ads may be displayed.

What is the Difference between Contextual Ads and PPC Ads?

When people search there is an implied demand for that product at the instant they see your ad (assuming you target your ads properly). With contextual advertising there is not as much direct implied demand when your ad is showing. Contextual ads often have a similar or slightly lower price per click than the regular search pay per click ads.

Contextual ads have an added value which can not easily be tracked though. Contextual ads usually have a low clickthrough rate, which means the cost per impression is rather cheap. People may also associate your brand and your website with the articles they are reading on other quality websites, thus contextual advertising may boost your brand at an extremely cheap price.

Who are the Largest Contextual Ad Servers?

Currently Overture is partnered with a few major websites. Google has taken a more diverse set of partners (including many micro content publishers) into their Google AdSense program.

Kanoodle has done a good job of branding itself as a contextual ad providing network. Kanoodle has partnered with many strong websites in the financial field.

Contextual Ad: a brief how to...

When advertising on a contextual ad network it is important to decide whether you are advertising as a direct marketer or as a person building brand.

Google offers image ads which help build brand, but will likely have a lower clickthrough rate for many industries. If you are advertising to build brand then likely you will want to place your company position in the ad more than you will want to write compelling ad copy.

Contextual Advertising on Google AdWords / Google AdSense

• Google Contextual ads are not based on a single keyword, but the keyword list associated with a specific ad group.
• In addition the ad group creatives play are also used to help understand what ads to display.
• Max PPC and clickthrough rate also play into the order of the ads displayed.
• You want to use well themed keyword ad groups to help ensure your ads are delivered properly. Including generic words like laptop can make it harder for Google to understand what your ad group is trying to sell.
• Using appropriate campaign negative keywords can also help further target your ads.
• Smart pricing helps reduce the cost of the ad based on Google's predicted value of the click. While many people find smart pricing to be effective you may also want to manually ensure proper price discounting by disabling content syndication on your search ad groups and then create lower priced ad groups with content syndication enabled.

See also (external links):

• Google AdWords contextual advertising tips
• Google AdWords - for advertising
• Google AdSense - for publishing ads on your site
• Overture
• Kanoodle