Year after year, contextual advertising is becoming increasingly popular. Specialized sites improve the way ads are evaluated so that customers can receive the most relevant responses to their requests, and advertising customers put up really good offers and make a profit. But for many, the question still remains, what is the basis of such a demand and the secret to the effective operation of contextual advertising? About advertising on the Internet, its varieties, advantages and other things you will learn below.
contextual advertising
Contextual advertising refers to ads on the Web, the principle of which is to precisely meet the needs of potential customers and unobtrusiveness. As a rule, they meet 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 to contextual advertising is reduced to zero.
It follows from this that it acts selectively and is reflected only in those cases when specific requests have been made. Accordingly, with the right campaign setting, you can get a high quality indicator, expressed in new customers and hanging 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 trading offer. With the correct alignment and presentation of these two factors to potential customers, the advertiser will certainly receive great benefits.
For this reason, the Global Network has such a huge number of those who make little money and very few really well-earned.
Varieties of contextual advertising
Not sure how to advertise on the Internet? The entire block of contextual advertising is divided into three categories:
- Banner advertising is an immovable or animated picture. This type comes across on the Web quite often, because the banners are very visible and have a high degree of conversion, which positively affects the results.
- Video advertising is an advertisement in which video material is involved. 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 advertising is shown in the process of watching videos on the Internet, when at the beginning of the show a short video appears 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 goods 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 illustration, but with a mandatory link to a popularized resource. Text advertising, in turn, is divided into two subspecies: search and thematic.
Search ads appear in the results only if a specific request is received from the audience. It can be entered both in a search engine and on a regular site with such a function, respectively, information will be collected both in the Global Network and within one specific portal.
Topical contextual advertising on the Internet is displayed only on the pages of a particular site, if its theme meets the needs of users. It is demonstrated not in search engines, but on ordinary resources, and is a component of the page content. This subspecies has a second name - behavioral advertising, this is due to the fact that the ad that appears corresponds to the interests and requests of users.
Contextual advertising systems
Advertising on the Internet is placed on special sites, the largest of which are:
- Yandex.Direct. This is the development of Yandex, the system cooperates with all groups and topics that are allowed by Russian law, respectively, and there are enough chances to be seen in contextual advertising in Yandex.Direct.
- "Runner". Search engine "Rambler", which has a huge database of connected thematic resources.
- Contextual advertising in Google Edwards - a platform for advertising from Google, which allows you to place ads on a network of partner portals.
In addition to these systems, there are others, they are much smaller and not so popular, but very effective for sites with certain topics of a highly specialized orientation.
The most expensive advertising on the Internet, including contextual advertising, is published on the largest reputable sites, and the more quality visitors it has, the more expensive the placement will cost. For beginners, the launch of contextual advertising is better to start 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 selected site and follow the instructions. Funds are required to display ads.
What is the principle of contextual advertising
Want to advertise on the Internet, but don't fully understand how it works? The principle of the operation of contextual advertising is built quite simply - there is always something that needs to be advertised (goods, services, sites, etc.), and there are always people who need it.
To help the advertiser and the consumer find each other, an intermediary is required, in which case they are the 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 customers, calls and requests, depends on how well it is tuned. Therefore, if you do not have special skills in this area, then it is better to entrust the work to specialists from the contextual advertising agency, thereby saving not only time, but also money.
After passing the moderation, an advertising campaign is launched. As soon as a request from the user appears in the search line containing the key phrase of your ad, your advertisement is immediately shown to him. If the announcement appears interesting, it will follow the link in the text to the advertised resource.
Further actions of the user directly depend on the quality of the site, trading offer and, of course, the cost of goods or services. The latter factor most often plays a key role. Therefore, if the advertiser is all right, the ad is set up correctly, the site is made correctly and there is a good unique selling proposition (UTP), then the success of the marketing campaign is guaranteed.
The benefits of contextual advertising
Next, you will learn what makes contextual advertising one of the most effective ways 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 flashy and intrusive advertising on the Internet. This primarily refers to pop-up and pop-ups and video ads when watching a video. Unlike the listed types of advertising on the Internet, contextual advertising does not have all these disadvantages:
- It is not displayed arbitrarily, but only in cases where direct search queries are received from the audience or in accordance with their interests.
- She has a small format that includes only the main information about the seller’s offer.
- The opening of advertising is not accompanied by any movements and sounds, so it practically does not distract the 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 simply by 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, therefore they believe it.
Accurate targeting
For example, television advertisements 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 conditioned circle of people. Firstly, it is shown exclusively for certain words entered by users, which guarantees their interest in the purchase. Secondly, you can configure (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 have not completed the target action.
Wide audience reach
Millions of people use the World Wide Web every day, almost everyone 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 affiliate networks. All this several times increases the likelihood that a large number of users will see the advertising message.
Quick start
To understand this point, you will need to compare contextual advertising with SEO-promotion of the site, since both of these marketing tools are similar to each other by the method of selecting the target audience, but differ greatly in the speed of achieving the first effects. A constant influx of visitors due to SEO-promotion begins at least a few months of work, which includes technical optimization, filling in text, finalizing the structure of the site and more. 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 unit guarantee as many clicks as when getting into the top of natural delivery.
Flexible pricing
Payments are made for clicks, not impressions, so the advertiser can independently determine the optimal budget for the advertising campaign. The cost of clicks is significantly different (sometimes even tens or hundreds of times) depending on the topic and requests. This information can be found out in advance and on its basis to prepare an estimate. A test launch will require about 10,000 rubles a month, advertising for a small business will cost 10-15 tons, for an average one - from 30 to 50 tons, large organizations spend from 200,000 or more on placing contextual advertising on the Internet.
The ability to calculate efficiency
All types of offline advertising on radio, television, magazines and street banners have a serious drawback - it’s almost impossible to accurately calculate the effectiveness of their actions. But for business development, you just need to know how many people saw your ad, how many of them were interested, and how many purchases were made. On contextual advertising, all this and much more can be tracked through detailed statistics:
- In your personal account on the Yandex.Direct website and Google AdWords.
- In Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics web analytics systems.
For example, online stores can configure the system so that they receive sales reports, that is, information is collected about all categories of goods and services that were implemented through advertising. Organizations that accept call requests can set up call tracking.
For contextual advertising, you can generate and analyze the following data:
- Statistics and query performance.
- The price of a click on a specific request in an advertisement.
- Site traffic by day of the week, time of day, geography, site and more.
- The popularity of various types of advertisements with the audience.
- Price for one visitor / cost of one attracted customer, etc.
Contextual advertising statistics can be viewed in real time, which, you must agree, is important, since this approach helps to quickly change settings and get the best result.
Manage contextual advertising and evaluate its effectiveness
To assess the effectiveness of contextual advertising on the Internet, it is enough to use special tools to measure factors such as click-through rate, number of clicks, average rate of one click and so on. In addition, the effectiveness should be evaluated by the actions of visitors to the promoted portal, since it is not enough that the user simply clicked on the advertisement on the site, it was necessary for him to carry out the target action.
To measure these indicators, you can use special tools offered by large search engines such as Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics, which we talked about above.
The main indicator of the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is Return On Investment (ROI). It is calculated as a percentage and reflects how effectively the invested funds worked. It is calculated by the following formula:
- ROI = (profit - advertising budget): advertising budget.
If the result is 100%, it means that your profit has been doubled due to this advertisement. But in some cases, it can have a negative value. Be that as it may, this indicator only reflects how justified your investments in contextual advertising were.
Conclusion
Online advertising is clearly an effective way to promote goods and services. Every year and even day it becomes obvious that it is necessary to master all methods of advertising, including the Global Network. For the effective work of contextual advertising, the correct setting is necessary, accordingly, it is better to entrust this task to a specialist. Today, there are many options - these are multidisciplinary contextual advertising agencies, and private directors, and it is up to you to decide who is more comfortable to work with. Each of them has its own specifics of work, which may be suitable for one, but not the other.