Online Marketing News ‘ Content targeted adverts

Both Google Ads (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 Content Match by Overture and 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 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 David Beckham and Michael Owen, although Wayne Rooney has yet to make an appearance!

Google has also become a place to search for information on anything and anybody! 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!

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