Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is targeted advertising where text, display or video ads appear in designated areas on web pages based on the content on the page. Contextual advertising provides advertisers with an opportunity to tap into a huge inventory of primarily text ads on web sites across the web. Publishers have a chance to monetize their page views by displaying text, display and video ads on their content pages.

Keyword-based Contextual Advertising

Keyword-based contextual advertising operates much like search ads in a traditional search pay-per-click auction-based ad network. Advertisers choose keywords relevant to their products or services and compose text ads based on the selected keywords. Advertisers bid for placement and rank and then pay a fee each time someone clicks on a sponsored text ad, but instead of the ads appearing in search results, they appear on web pages at other web sites.

Contextual advertising networks will display text or display ads on relevant web pages of content sites that have signed up as publishing partners. The ad networks use information extraction technology to determine what a particular page is about and then map the most contextually relevant ads within the ad network database to that page.

Google Site Targeting

Site targeting is a variation of contextual advertising offered by the Google AdWords Content Network. Site targeting allows advertisers to place their ads on pages of specific web sites. Site targeting ads, which can be display ads or text ads, are sold on CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM-basis (cost-per-thousand impressions), a payment model preferred by brand advertisers. Using site targeting, Google AdWords advertisers can enter their CPM ads directly into their site's AdWords campaign. Their CPM ads will compete against the CPC (cost-per-click) ads in the auction system - and if it wins, it will run in place of the CPC ads that would have otherwise appeared. Advertisers can pull up a list of sites from the Google Content Network that fall under the vertical content theme of their site's content and then exclude those publisher web sites they don't want their ads to appear on.

Contextual Versus Search Campaigns

Contextual ads are often viewed under different circumstances and with a different mindset than search text ads. Contextual advertising campaigns, therefore, may require different creative, campaign structure, bidding strategy and ROI goals than pay-per-click search campaigns.

Characteristics of Contextual Advertising

Click-through rates and cost-per-click conversions for contextual ads are usually lower than for search ads. Keyword-based contextual advertising, on the other hand, can provide substantial impressions and maximum exposure at a very competitive rate. This presents an extremely cost-effective way to enhance a brand online compared to other methods. Contextual ads are also great for companies who have already fully utilized the traditional search keyword inventory available to them, but who want to continue to explore additional online advertising opportunities.

Publishing Partners

Yahoo! and Google are working with major distribution partners to offer contextual advertising on a wide variety of content and information pages that get thousands of views every day.

Yahoo! contextual ads currently appear on the following partner sites: Yahoo properties News, Shopping and Travel, CNN.com, NationalGeographic.com, HomeGain.com, weather.com, iVillage.com and large number of other larger publishing networks.

Google text ads are shown on HowStuffWork.com, About.com, InfoSpace web properties, Lycos, Business.com, New York Times Online, US News and World Report and on over 400,000 other participating web sites.

Contextual Advertising Services

Advanced Media Productions offers a full-service keyword-based contextual advertising management program. This includes keyword research, developing and testing of text ads, video ads, display ads and landing pages, campaign set-up, bid management, campaign reporting and campaign review/analysis for further campaign performance improvements. We actively work with our clients to manage their contextual advertising campaigns to ensure they meet their online marketing goals.

Keyword Research

Keyword research to establish a list of keyword phrases that is relevant to the advertisers' products and services is an important first step in the PPC contextual advertising campaign set-up. When the right keyword phrases are selected and grouped with ad text in “tightly-themed” ad groups, ads will be served on the most relevant content pages.

Campaign Set-up and Keyword Submission

The Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing contextual ad networks (Content Match) allow advertisers to define the keywords they want to target, develop customized ads for each group of keywords, as well as selecting the web page(s) and/or landing pages they want to direct the traffic to.

Campaign set-up and keyword submission includes:

• Account registration and activation
• Keyword research and keyword selection, including negative keywords
• Assessment of maximum average bid cost based on projected rank position for each ad, estimated monthly number of click-throughs and ad budget
• Setting maximum bids for each AdWords keyword group, daily budget amounts and ad run schedule
• Determine daily/monthly campaign budget
• Grouping of related keyword phrases and ads into “tightly-themed” ad groups
• Development of text ads and/or display ad creative for each ad group in accordance to the Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing specifications
• Entry of keyword data and ad creative
• Optimization and development of special landing pages when required
• Linking ads to relevant web site pages and/or landing pages
• Resolve any problems regarding Google and Yahoo rejected keywords

Any cost-per-click or CPM payments to the Yahoo Search Marketing and Google AdWords ad networks will be charged to the customers' credit card. Monthly advertising budgets can be fixed for the entire month and will not exceed the allocated amounts. Advanced Media Productions does not mark-up cost-per-click and CPM advertising charges.

Learn more about campaign set-up and keyword submission for Keyword-based Contextual Advertising.

PPC Bid Management and ROI Tracking Program

After campaign set-up and keyword submission has been completed the established ad rankings, cost-per-click and daily ad budgets must be monitored against competitive bids and click-to-sale or click-to-lead conversions must be tracked to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for each ad group in the campaign portfolio.

Bid management and ROI tracking monitors daily ad budgets, maximum bid cost, ad rankings, keyword group and campaign performance and has become an essential part of any keyword-based contextual advertising campaign.

The PPC Bid Management and ROI Tracking program includes:

• Daily and weekly monitoring of campaign performance (traffic, sales, cost per acquisition and return on investment), evaluation and adjustment of non-performing ad groups
• Ongoing monitoring of ad rankings, adjustment of ad group bid amounts (cost per click) within pre-set parameters to maintain the desired ad ranking positions
• Optimizing ad group bids for bid positions that yield the best return on pre-determined business objectives, e.g. Cost per Action (CPA), Profit Margin (PM) and Return on Investment (ROI)
• Day parting through scheduled pausing and un-pausing of ad groups based on time of day or day of the week
• Monitoring of preset daily and monthly ad budgets
• Campaign maintenance - Access to a senior account manager to request turning on and off ad groups, change bid amounts and bid rules, adjust ad run schedules, updates to the daily ad budget, excluding non-performing web sites from the ad network and other campaign updates
• Ongoing keyword research and expansion of the keyword base including writing of new ad text
• Testing and improving existing ads to create a better match to the keyword “theme” of the ad group, writing more compelling ad text with a more coherent call to action
• Periodic campaign structural reorganization by breaking existing ad groups into separate groups with new ads and different landing pages
• Creating and testing multiple (alternate) ads for each keyword ad group to improve average click-through rate, raise average ad position and decrease cost per click
• Analyze current landing pages through multivariate testing to improve landing page conversion rates. Expand the current campaign with new landing pages as required
• Campaign review - Create monthly campaign performance and placement performance reports via email for monitoring of campaign results, including the number of impressions, click-throughs, lead and sales conversions, revenue and campaign cost
• Quarterly evaluation of the campaign strategy, competition, keyword fluctuations and forecasting of the upcoming quarter based on historical data along with seasonal market considerations

Learn more about Keyword-based Contextual Advertising.

Contact us or call 1-888-755-5151, ext 17 for more information.