Online Marketing News – Content targeted adverts

Both Google
AdWords and Overture
have recently extended their pay-per-click advertising programs to allow website
owners to display adverts on their site that are relevant to their page content.
These ‘contextual adverts’ are branded as href="http://www.content.overture.com/d/UKm/ac/ba/cm.jhtml"
target="_blank">Content Match by Overture and href="https://www.google.com/adsense/?hl=en_GB" target="_blank">AdSense by
Google, who provide information on some of their partners and an example of how
these adverts work are displayed.

Our experience has been that, although contextual adverts can generate high
volumes of impressions, they do not currently create a significant amount of
traffic or conversions as the main PPC adverts displayed in search listings.
This is mainly because the adverts may be displayed when users are not actually
searching for a product or service, or are not directly related to the content
page where they are displayed.

Google attempts to recognise this with its variable ‘smart pricing’
structure, which can discount contextual adverts if they are less effective.
Within Overture it is up to the advertiser to assess the worth of contextual
adverts when making bids. Another factor to consider is whether you want to
retain a high level of control over which websites you are being associated
with, so with both campaigns you can decide whether to include the contextual
adverts in your PPC campaign or not.

On the positive side, contextual adverts can extend the reach of your
campaign at a very reasonable cost, so may well be suitable if you are looking
for maximum exposure or if pay-per-click is proving a very effective medium for
you. If you are already running a PPC campaign, or are planning on setting one
up and would like more information about the role of content targeted adverts,
please contact us for more details.

Search Tip – searching for people

If you’re searching for information on a famous person, the US href="http://www.ask.com" target="_blank">Ask Jeeves site can be a good place
to start. They provide a short biography and a number of links to further
information on a wide range of famous people at the top of the search results.
Although still quite US-biased, it does well for href="http://web.ask.com/web?q=david+beckham&o=0&qsrc=0"
target="_blank">David Beckham and href="http://web.ask.com/web?q=michael+owen&o=0&qsrc=0"
target="_blank">Michael Owen, although href="http://web.ask.com/web?q=wayne+rooney&o=0&qsrc=0"
target="_blank">Wayne Rooney has yet to make an appearance!

Google has also become a place to search for information on anything and
anybody! target="_blank">‘Googling’ a person is apparently now widespread in the US but
has yet to catch on here. Another technique is ‘neighbourhood research’ to find
out snippets of information about your neighbours by searching a post code on
Google!