Contextual advertising has often been hailed as the development that transformed online advertising into the billion-dollar industry it is today.
Of course, the internet was always eventually going to capture the attention of big-player advertisers, but it's worth remembering that not so long ago, online advertising was a pretty hit and miss affair. It was Google's AdSense, of course, that spearheaded the provision of contextual ads that were actually related to page content and a set-up that was simple enough to be adopted by millions of advertisers and publishers.
It's no surprise, then, that contextual advertising options - which are now offered by many affiliate advertising programs besides Google - are often seen as first choice by new affiliate publishers. But should they be?
Much of the success of contextual advertising - particularly text-unit type ads - depends on the site they appear on. And if that sounds obvious, what might not be clear is that, unless your content is widely varied, contextual advertising can turn out more of a burden than a bonanza.
For example, not all sites feature the large amounts of text that contextual advertising works with best: photo or art galleries are one example. Contextual systems, in these cases, are going to depend almost entirely on page titles or meta descriptions to generate advertising. The result? Less flexible advertising that's likely to look pretty identical throughout the site.
Sites that feature textual content based around a central theme can be similarly affected, even if the copy varies considerably from page to page.
Imagine, for example, that your site or blog is exclusively devoted to football. While the range of possible ads is broad, duplication is almost certain to occur as these ads are repeatedly served to each page.
But if the whole point of contextual advertising is to deliver marketing geared towards a theme that interests users, what's the problem?
There are several. To start with, endless exposure to different combinations of exactly the same ad is likely to diminish the efficiency of a campaign - a one-trick pony can quickly lose its appeal.
What's more, the situation often gets worse if more than one contextual unit from the same ad provider is used on a page. Although ads are meant to rotate, in reality it's not unusual to end up with different units displaying identical ads at the same time.
Whether or not you feel that constant exposure may eventually interest some users enough to click; or that ads repeated on page after page of a site are actually a waste of valuable advertising space - a final problem is the sheer difficulty in producing any variation in your advertising even if you want to.
Let's face it - even visitors with a major interest in our football example are also likely to be attracted to lucrative products that generally appeal to all audiences - insurance, medical care, movies, automobiles, vacations, for example.
Google AdWords can be adapted to include keywords even if they're not present on the page, but the nasty sting in the tail is that only nominated 'Premium Publishers' are permitted to use this system. Since you'll need hundreds of thousands of visitors to be invited into this hierarchy, anyone else is excluded (although inconsistently, it's possible to promote any type of AdSense referral product alongside its contextual units).
Which leaves a final, impractical option of creating specific content to attract specific ads (try coming up with a feature on movie releases while also reflecting that football theme and you'll see the problem).
So if contextual advertising prevents you having things your way, the most practical choice for those affected is to combine advertising programs.
CPA referral systems allow you to include your own choice of ads on a site, although these generally tend to be for very specific products and brands.
If you'd like your ads to remain more in keeping with contextual text units, both AdBrite and Bidvertiser give the option to create your own list of desired keywords - so by stating a preference for movies, insurance, vacations, etc, you've got at least some chance that related ads will appear (you can also reject ads if you wish, allowing you to filter content even further).
The downside is that you can't guarantee your requirements will be met, so could end up with advertising that's even more unsuitable than the constantly recurring contextual content.
But through experiment with different advertising programs you should, eventually, find a solution that's right for you. Sure - this can take some time and a lot of cutting and pasting of code to achieve. If your goal, however, is to end up with an affiliate advertising vehicle that's optimized to produce revenue, you'll find it's well worth the extra effort.
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