What is Contextual Advertising?

Have you ever been browsing a website and seen an advertisement banner that's perfectly aligned with what you're reading? This is contextual advertising.

Contextual advertisement is a way to earn from your web pages by having ad banners that are relevant to the content of the page.

How to implement contextual advertising in your blog or website

The most popular platform for integrating contextual ads into the web is undoubtedly Google AdSense.

This Google tool allows the owner of a website, blog, or e-commerce site, to easily insert various sized ad banners into their site using a code provided by Big G itself.

Here's the link to start using Google's platform to insert advertising on your site.

As mentioned, this advertisement program is part of contextual advertising because, if set up correctly, the banners will be consistent with what the reader sees.

If your blog talks about travel, the banners you have inserted will be discounts and promotions for flight packages and exotic locations!

How much can you earn with the Google AdSense program?

It's a bit like it always happens: the more you give, the more you get.

This means that the banners only work if you have a lot of traffic on your site. In fact, each click pays just a few cents of euro and, only if you have a very significant influx of users, can you earn enough from a program of this type.

Are there alternatives to Google AdSense?

Of course there are.

List of Alternatives to Google AdSense

There are other services for contextual banners, here are the most important:

• Amazon Associates: a very valid alternative to Google AdSense. If your blog talks about technology, for example, or you review products, this could be the program for you. The banner will relate to products in your sector on sale at Amazon and will add value to your content by helping the user to purchase a product they are definitely interested in.
• Infolink: a slightly more "opaque" but valid and permitted technique. With this contextual advertising platform, you can insert links that blend in with the text of the article and which are, in fact, promotions leading to external links.
• PopAds: a somewhat more invasive but definitely functional alternative that causes contextual advertising to appear via a pop-up window on the page.

We've discussed this when talking about Infolink. To optimize earnings from contextual advertisement banners, there are specific techniques for creating these elements (attractive graphics and colors as well as the right choice of sizes) and experiments on their strategic placement within the page!

Contextual Advertising: Who Promotes the Banners

Until now, we have talked about how to insert contextual advertising banners into one's site, but we must undoubtedly touch upon who puts the banner into the circuit that will be seen by the reader: the publisher!

If you can put your banner on a blog, it is thanks to the publisher who invests money every time someone clicks on it (that's right, you earn and they invest).

Those who want to promote themselves on the web usually use Google ADS campaigns (to create those ads that appear in Google search), but within the same program, there is also the possibility to create a different type of advertising: display campaigns.

The result of this advertising campaign will be the banner that you insert into your web page!

The choice to run such a campaign can be justified by the low cost of pay per click (the cost that the publisher invests each time a user clicks on their banner) or by targeted campaigns for increasing Brand Awareness (the popularity of one's brand).

The evolution of contextual advertising: behavioral advertising

In the early 2000s, contextual advertising was very popular and was indeed one of the major sources of income for large portals.

Now technology allows even more advanced and sophisticated techniques to promote one's company online!

We are talking about targeted sponsorships (including on social media) that allow for a very deep targeting of the audience who will view the content.

These also use contextual advertising, but only as a starting point.

How behavioral advertising works and the use of contextual advertisement

You may have found yourself visiting many computer sites because you're looking to buy a computer.

In the following days, you'll be bombarded with banners of all sorts related to this product.

This happens not just when you're visiting a site that talks about PCs but also in your Facebook stream, when you search for a restaurant on Google, or when you are using an app on your smartphone.

In short, the web knows what you're looking for and leverages your latent desire to purchase a PC.

How is all this possible? Through the websites' cookies.

In very simple terms, cookies allow website owners and managers to know what the reader does and how they behave by using these data packets to promote their products or company.

The Google Display Network banners (we talked about this before) also use these new technologies to not only show advertisements in a contextual manner (as we said before, if you read an IT article you will see a banner related to a product connected to that field) but also to "follow" you with ads on other sites to "remind" you to purchase your new computer!

Advantages and Disadvantages of Contextual Advertising

Returning to the classic contextual advertising, we can say that the biggest advantage for those who run display campaigns to promote their company, is the very low cost-per-click compared to that of a search campaign (Google ADS), while for those who place these ads on their own site, the benefits include easy installation and deep customization of the banner.

The disadvantages of contextual advertising are the low commissions per click and the technology being "outdated" by behavioral advertising which, among other things, uses the display network as a vector for even deeper advertisement!