Contextual Advertising: Facts, Myths, and Misconceptions Part 1

Reader Question: I have newsletter articles and a forum on my Web site. Since I often have focused content on these pages, I thought that contextual ads might be a good way to supplement income from my site. Is this a good idea? What types of contextual advertising programs are available?

Answer: Contextual advertising is a great way to add relevant advertising to a Web site, particularly if a site's content is written in a search-engine friendly manner. If a blog or forum contains discussions about the different types of Web hosting available, then ads about Web hosting can appear along the top and/or the right side of a page. These ads might contain the exact information readers are searching for.

Additionally, if you are a small- to medium-size business owner, contextual advertising can save you considerable time and expense. Many of the major and second-tier search engines offer contextual advertising programs.

What is contextual advertising?

Contextual advertising is a type of online advertising commonly used for content-based Web sites, such as publisher or news sites. With contextual advertising, targeted ads appear on a Web page based on the page's actual content.

First, a contextual advertising system scans the text (content) of a Web page for keyword phrases. Then, the system returns specific, targeted ads based on the content people are viewing. Contextual ads usually appear in three formats: separate ads that appear in specific areas on a page, inline or in-text contextual ads, or pop-up ads.

Types of contextual advertising

In the search engine marketing (SEM) industry, the contextual ads that people are most familiar with are

Another type of inline contextual advertising is called in-text contextual advertising, a type of advertising offered by companies such as

In Part 2 of this article series, I will analyze some of the common myths and misconceptions about the various types of contextual advertising.

Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Shari Thurow Answers SEO Questions: Click Here For Free Answers