Year after year, contextual advertising is gaining more and more popularity. Specialized marketplaces are improving the way ads are rated so that customers can get the most relevant responses to their queries, and ad customers can post really good offers and make a profit. But for many, the question still remains, what is the basis of such demand and the secret of the effective work of contextual advertising? You will learn about advertising on the Internet, its varieties, benefits and other things below.
Contextual advertising
Contextual advertising is called ads on the Web, the principle of which is the exact match to the needs of potential customers and unobtrusiveness. As a rule, they respond to user requests in the search line and the subject of the advertised page, and the person himself decides whether to follow the link or not. Thus, the negative attitude towards contextual advertising is reduced to zero.
From this it follows that it acts selectively andreflected only in cases where specific requests have been made. Accordingly, with the right campaign setting, you can get a high quality indicator, expressed in new customers and increased sales. Therefore, first of all, you should be aware that contextual advertising is a tool aimed at increasing sales and attracting new customers through the Network.
The principle of this type of advertising is information and exclusivity of the trade offer. With the right alignment and presentation of these two factors to potential customers, the advertiser will certainly receive great benefits.
It is for this reason that there is such a huge number of those who make little money and very few people who really earn well on the Global Web.
Varieties of contextual advertising
Don't know how to advertise online? The entire block of contextual advertising is divided into three categories:
- Banner advertising is a real or animated picture. This type comes across quite often on the Web, because banners are very visible and have a high conversion rate, which positively affects the results.
- Video ads are ads that use video material. Today it is very actively used as a means of promoting goods and services, and the popularity of video advertising continues to grow. Basically, such ads are shown while watching videos on the Internet, when a short message appears at the beginning of the show.video for 20-25 seconds. In addition, there are viral videos that are most often posted on the Web by reputable organizations to promote their own products or services.
- The next type of contextual advertising on the Internet is text. This is perhaps the most common type of advertising found everywhere. It is a text ad with or without an illustration, but with a mandatory link to the resource being promoted. Text advertising, in turn, is divided into two subspecies: search and thematic.
Search ads are displayed in the results only if a certain request was received from the audience. It can be entered both in a search engine and on a regular site with such a function, respectively, the collection of information will be carried out both on the Global Network and within one specific portal.
Thematic contextual advertising on the Internet is displayed only on the pages of a certain site, if its theme meets the needs of users. It is shown not in search engines, but on ordinary resources, and is a component of the content of the page. This subspecies has a second name - behavioral advertising, this is due to the fact that the ad that appears meets the interests and needs of users.
Systems that work with contextual advertising
Advertising on the Internet is placed on special platforms, the largest of them are:
- "Yandex. Direct". This is a development of the Yandex company, the system cooperates with all groups and topics that are allowed by Russianlegislation, respectively, there are enough chances to be noticed for contextual advertising in Yandex. Direct.
- "Runner". Search engine "Rambler", which has a huge database of connected thematic resources.
- Contextual advertising in "Google Edwards" - an advertising platform from Google that allows you to place ads in a network of partner portals.
In addition to the above systems, there are others, they are much smaller and not so popular, but very effective for sites with certain highly specialized topics.
The most expensive advertising on the Internet, including contextual advertising, is published on the largest authoritative sites, and the more quality visitors it has, the more expensive the placement will be. It is better for beginners to launch contextual advertising with search engines, this will give a good influx of traffic. After some time, it will be possible to connect thematic portals and blogs.
Many users are interested in the question of how to place free contextual advertising on the Internet. All ads are placed free of charge, for this you just need to register on the site of your choice and follow the instructions. Funds are required to serve ads.
What is the principle of contextual advertising
Want to advertise online but don't fully understand how it works? The principle of contextual advertising is built quite simply - there is always what you needadvertise (goods, services, websites, etc.), and there are always people who need it.
To help the advertiser and the consumer find each other, an intermediary is required, in this case it is a platform for advertising. An entrepreneur who has something to offer, independently or through a specially trained person, places contextual advertising on this site. The final result, displayed in the form of new clients, calls and applications, depends on how well it is configured. Therefore, if you do not have special skills in this area, then it is better to entrust the work to specialists from a contextual advertising agency, thereby saving not only time, but also money.
After moderation, an advertising campaign is launched. As soon as a request from a user containing the key phrase of your ad appears in the search bar, your ad is immediately shown to him. If the ad appears interesting, he will follow the link in the text to the advertised resource.
Further actions of the user directly depend on the quality of the site, the trade offer and, of course, the cost of the product or service. The last factor often plays a key role. Therefore, if the advertiser is all right, the ad is set up correctly, the site is well-designed and there is a good unique selling proposition (USP), then the success of the marketing campaign is guaranteed.
Benefits of contextual advertising
Next, you will learn what makes contextual advertising one ofthe most effective way to promote products and services. The first point is a convenient scheme for providing information.
Every year, users are becoming more and more nervous about too catchy and intrusive advertising on the Internet. This primarily applies to pop-ups, drop-downs, and video ads while watching a video. Unlike the listed types of advertising on the Internet, contextual advertising does not have all these shortcomings:
- It is not displayed randomly, but only if there are direct search queries from the audience or in accordance with their interests.
- It has a small format, including only the main information about the seller's offer.
- Opening an advertisement is not accompanied by any movements and sounds, so it practically does not distract a person's attention from the content of the page. And if the user is interested in a product or service, then you can go to the site and place an order by simply clicking on the ad.
In addition, a significant part of the audience still perceives contextual advertising in search engines as an element of search results, so they believe it.
Accurate hitting the target audience
For example, television advertising or street billboards are shown to everyone who is nearby at that moment, and contextual advertising of a site on the Internet is aimed only at a certain circle of people. Firstly, it is shown exclusively for certain words entered by users, which guarantees their interest in buying. Secondly, you canset up (targeting) for certain areas and cities, period, hobbies and other important parameters. Thirdly, you can do remarketing / retargeting, which will help return those who have already visited the site, but did not complete the target action.
Wide audience coverage
World Wide Web is used daily by millions of people, almost every person today has access to the Internet through a laptop, tablet or phone. Ads are displayed not only in the main search engines such as contextual advertising in Google and Yandex, but also on various portals of their partner networks. All this several times increases the likelihood that an advertising message will be seen by a large number of users.
Quick start
To analyze this point, you will need to compare contextual advertising with SEO site promotion, since both of these marketing tools are similar to each other in the method of selecting the target audience, but differ greatly in the speed of achieving the first effects. A constant influx of visitors through SEO promotion begins after at least a few months of work, which includes technical optimization, filling in text, finalizing the site structure, and so on. Search contextual advertising in "Yandex. Direct" and "Google" allows you to receive the first requests and orders within a few days after the start of the advertising campaign. And the first positions in a special placement block guarantee the same number of clicks as if you hit the top of natural search results.
Flexible pricing
Payment is made for clicks, not for impressions, thanks to this, the advertiser can independently set the optimal budget for an advertising campaign. The cost of clicks varies significantly (sometimes even tens or hundreds of times) depending on the topic and queries. This information can be obtained in advance and, based on it, an estimate can be prepared. For a test launch, you will need about 10,000 rubles a month, advertising for a small business will cost 10–15 tons, for a medium business - from 30 to 50 tons, large organizations spend from 200,000 or more to place contextual advertising on the Internet.
Ability to calculate efficiency
All types of offline advertising on radio, television, magazines and street banners have a serious drawback - it is almost impossible to accurately calculate the effectiveness of their action. But to grow your business, you just need to know how many people viewed your ad, how many of them were interested, and how many purchases were made. For contextual advertising, all this and much more can be tracked through detailed statistics:
- In your account on Yandex. Direct and Google AdWords.
- In web analytics systems "Yandex. Metrika" and Google Analytics.
For example, online stores can set up the system in such a way that they receive sales reports, that is, they collect information about all categories of goods and services that were realized through advertising. Organizations that accept applications in the form of calls can set up a calltracking.
On contextual advertising, you can generate and analyze the following data:
- Statistics and query performance.
- Cost per click for a specific query in an ad.
- Site traffic by day of the week, time of day, geography, location, etc.
- Popularity of various types of advertisements among the audience.
- Price per visitor/cost per attracted customer, etc.
Statistics on contextual advertising can be viewed in real time, which, you see, is important, since this approach helps to quickly change settings and get the best result.
Managing contextual advertising and evaluating its effectiveness
To evaluate the effectiveness of contextual advertising on the Internet, it is enough to use special tools to measure such coefficients as click through rate, number of clicks, average bid per click, and so on. In addition, performance should be assessed by the actions of visitors on the promoted portal, since it is not enough that the user simply followed the advertisement to the site, it is necessary that he perform the target action.
To measure these indicators, you can use the special tools offered by major search engines, such as Yandex. Metrica and Google Analytics, we talked about them above.
The main indicator of the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is Return On Investment (ROI). It is calculated as a percentage andreflects how effectively the invested funds worked. It is calculated according to the following formula:
ROI=(profit - advertising budget): advertising budget
If the result is 100%, it means that your profit was doubled due to this ad. But in some cases it can also be negative. Be that as it may, this indicator only reflects how justified your investments in contextual advertising were.
Conclusion
Internet advertising is definitely an effective way to promote goods and services. Every year and even every day it becomes obvious that it is necessary to master all methods of advertising, including the Global Network. For contextual advertising to work effectively, proper settings are required, so it is better to entrust this task to a specialist. Today, there are many options - these are multi-profile contextual advertising agencies, and private directors, and it's up to you to decide who is more comfortable to work with. Each of them has their own specific job that may suit some but not others.
