How To Make Money With Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising is the process that enables advertisers to provide ads based on the content of the site or content being viewed on a particular device. It’s an increasingly popular and lucrative method for advertisers because it doesn’t interrupt users and can be easily tracked.
This post covers how contextual advertising works, how it makes money, what are some pitfalls to be aware of and how brands can avoid them. We'll also show you some examples of companies that use contextual advertising successfully (including 1-800-Flowers) and discuss why they do so well with this type of advertising.
How Do I Make Money With Contextual Advertising?
Contextual advertising is a way to make money by allowing (and tracking) ads to appear on your website and content. You can set up keyword lists that include words and phrases you think your audience or niche might use in searches. When someone searches for something that comes close to one of these terms, an ad will appear after their search. In this way, you get paid for the views of these ads.
You can choose from display and text ads, but display ads often pay more because they’re bigger and more eye-catching. The more ads displayed on a page, the more you’ll get paid. Text ads pay less, but they can be used if there are lots of words that might be searched.
It's best to use contextual advertising when your company has a product or service a particular demographic might search for. For example, if someone is searching for cars on Google related to automotive maintenance, you’d want to make sure you're running contextual ads with car parts as keywords. If someone is searching for either of these things without this context or without synonyms or alternatives, the ad may not appear. This depends on the type of search engine and its relevance algorithms and how much it's been trained to scan for certain keywords over others.
How Does Contextual Advertising Make Money?
Advertisers can make money in different ways with contextual advertising. They take a percentage of the ad price that's negotiated with the network. Some networks (including Google) take a 30% share. You can also charge advertisers a fee or premium for placing ads in certain places or in certain formats or on certain devices. The PPC manager at your company should know how to set this up and get it approved by legal teams, so they are aware of any contractual agreements that may be required.
You should also have those contracts reviewed annually to make sure they continue to work and are still acceptable by advertisers.