Contextual advertising is the term applied to advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile phones, where the advertisements are selected and served by automated systems based on the content displayed by the user.
Google AdSense was the first major contextual advertising program. It worked by providing webmasters with JavaScript code that, when inserted into web pages, called up relevant advertisements from the Google inventory of advertisers. The relevance was calculated by a separate Google bot that indexed the content of the page.
Since the advent of AdSense, the Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft adCenter and others have been gearing up to make similar offerings.
Contextual advertising has made a major impact on earnings of many websites. As the ads are more targeted they are more likely to get clicked, thus generating revenue for the owner of the website (and the server of the advertisement). A large part of Google's earnings are from their share of the contextual ads served on the millions of webpages running the Adsense program.
Advertising on a Web site that is targeted to the specific individual who is visiting the Web site. A contextual ad system scans the text of a Web site for keywords and returns ads to the Web page based on what the user is viewing, either through ads placed on the page or pop-up ads. For example, if the user is viewing a site about sports, and the site uses contextual advertising, the user might see ads for sports-related companies, such as memorabilia dealers or ticket sellers. Contextual advertising also is used by search engines to display ads on their search results pages based on what word(s) the users has searched for.
Contextual advertising has attracted some controversy through the use of techniques such as third-party hyperlinking, where a third-party installs software onto a user’s computer that interacts with the browser by turning keywords on a Web page into links that lead to advertisers that are not paying the Web site to advertise on its pages. A contextual ad is the advertisement that dynamically appears on a Web site.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Tim Flight's Defination
Google policy prohibits the use of other contextual advertising programs alongside AdSense ads. We all (should) know this. But what exactly is the definition of contextual advertising? How would you define it? Go ahead… think about it now… write down what you think is the definition of contextual advertising. Really, write it down now because I want to give you a couple of scenarios and see if they fall within your definition of contextual advertising.Question 1: Done yet? Okay. So let’s say that you sign up for an advertising service and their servers look at the content of your page in order to determine which ads to display. I believe this would qualify under the definition of contextual advertising and would probably not be allowed.
Question 2: Another scenario. Let’s say you sign up with an advertising service and your server looks at the content of the page in order to determine which ads to display. Is this contextual advertising? The only difference is which server (yours or the advertising service) is analyzing the content of your page. Does this scenario fall within your definition of contextual advertising?
So how does this relate to scripts that automate the process of selecting keywords to use with Chitika eminimalls? There are plenty of them out there that insert the title of the post into the Chitika query or insert the categories the post appears in. Would your definition of contextual advertising include how these scripts read the content (page title, post category, etc) of the page and display relevant ads to the content?
If Google decided this type of scripting keywords isn’t allowed there probably isn’t much they could do since viewing the page source wouldn’t necessarily reveal how the Chitika query was generated. I’m not advocating against the use of such scripts, and I have experimented with some of them. Instead I’m curious how close we are to stepping over the line.
If people get too close to the line then perhaps Google might consider Chitika unacceptable to run alongside AdSense ads altogether. What do you think?Explore posts in the same categories:
One Comment on “Exactly What is Contextual Advertising?”
Chris Bloor Says: on December 20th, 2005 at 4:58 am
“Google policy prohibits the use of other contextual advertising programs alongside AdSense ads. We all (should) know this.”
What amazes me is how many people are churning on sites with nothing other than links and Adsense ads! and yet some of them make a small fortune in the process!
Long term I’m convinced that ‘Content is King’
Question 2: Another scenario. Let’s say you sign up with an advertising service and your server looks at the content of the page in order to determine which ads to display. Is this contextual advertising? The only difference is which server (yours or the advertising service) is analyzing the content of your page. Does this scenario fall within your definition of contextual advertising?
So how does this relate to scripts that automate the process of selecting keywords to use with Chitika eminimalls? There are plenty of them out there that insert the title of the post into the Chitika query or insert the categories the post appears in. Would your definition of contextual advertising include how these scripts read the content (page title, post category, etc) of the page and display relevant ads to the content?
If Google decided this type of scripting keywords isn’t allowed there probably isn’t much they could do since viewing the page source wouldn’t necessarily reveal how the Chitika query was generated. I’m not advocating against the use of such scripts, and I have experimented with some of them. Instead I’m curious how close we are to stepping over the line.
If people get too close to the line then perhaps Google might consider Chitika unacceptable to run alongside AdSense ads altogether. What do you think?Explore posts in the same categories:
One Comment on “Exactly What is Contextual Advertising?”
Chris Bloor Says: on December 20th, 2005 at 4:58 am
“Google policy prohibits the use of other contextual advertising programs alongside AdSense ads. We all (should) know this.”
What amazes me is how many people are churning on sites with nothing other than links and Adsense ads! and yet some of them make a small fortune in the process!
Long term I’m convinced that ‘Content is King’
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Wikipedia's Defination
Contextual advertising is the term applied to advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile phones, where the advertisements are selected and served by automated systems based on the content displayed by the user.
Google AdSense was the first major contextual advertising program. It worked by providing webmasters with JavaScript code that, when inserted into web pages, called up relevant advertisements from the Google inventory of advertisers. The relevance was calculated by a separate Google bot that indexed the content of the page.
Since the advent of AdSense, the Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft adCenter and others have been gearing up to make similar offerings.
Contextual advertising has made a major impact on earnings of many websites. As the ads are more targeted they are more likely to get clicked, thus generating revenue for the owner of the website (and the server of the advertisement). A large part of Google's earnings are from their share of the contextual ads served on the millions of webpages running the Adsense program.
Advertising on a Web site that is targeted to the specific individual who is visiting the Web site. A contextual ad system scans the text of a Web site for keywords and returns ads to the Web page based on what the user is viewing, either through ads placed on the page or pop-up ads. For example, if the user is viewing a site about sports, and the site uses contextual advertising, the user might see ads for sports-related companies, such as memorabilia dealers or ticket sellers. Contextual advertising also is used by search engines to display ads on their search results pages based on what word(s) the users has searched for.
Contextual advertising has attracted some controversy through the use of techniques such as third-party hyperlinking, where a third-party installs software onto a user’s computer that interacts with the browser by turning keywords on a Web page into links that lead to advertisers that are not paying the Web site to advertise on its pages. A contextual ad is the advertisement that dynamically appears on a Web site.
Agency Roles
There are many agencies that will help brands understand how contextual advertising options affect their advertising plans. There are three main components to online advertising. Creative (what does the ad look like), media planning (where do the ads run) and media buying (how do you pay for the ads). Contextual Advertising replaces the middle component, media planning. Instead of humans choosing placement options, that function is replaced with computers facilitating the placement across 1,000's of sites.
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