Contextual advertising banners from Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher and other vendors will deliver high CPMs and clickthrough rates if implemented with content that provides the right context.
What are contextual advertising banners? They are ads whose subject matter is determined dynamically by the site content that surrounds it.
For example, a contextual ad on a travel site will display travel advertisers. If the ad appears on a page about Caribbean cruises, the ad most likely will display cruise advertisers specifically.
Contextual ad vendors make it easy for any site to set up an account, create the advertising code and simply paste it on a page or into an advertising server application.
Simply go to the site, create an account and complete the necessary forms.
The vendors typically will allow a site to create any of the standard ad sizes of the Internet Advertising Bureau, including 728 x 90, 160 x 600 and 300 x 250. The revenue share is usually based on the cost per click model.
If you have an ad server, you can track the impression levels and probably the clickthrough rates on the ads. But more importantly you can track impressions, clickthroughs and revenue performance on a daily basis and sometimes on demand by going straight to your account on the vendor site.
The clickthrough rates and revenue per click depend on the subject matter of the surrounding content. Highly generalized content such as news will have a lower clickthrough rate — at times well under 1% — and lower revenue per click.
Travel, health, technology and personal finance will be much higher, with clickthrough rates sometimes exceeding 5%. Geographically targeted content also commands high click and revenue rates.
It benefits a site’s advertising results to build content that targets such high quality niches.
Contextual advertising for even generalized content often exceeds the CPM rates of national remnant campaigns.
Major contextual advertising vendors include:
1. Google AdSense
2. Yahoo! Publisher
3. ClickBank
4. Vibrant Media
5. Chitika