Writing this post back in the Typepad editor – why? Performancing have sold their metrics business to Pay-per-Post (no link love), and that isn’t where I want my data. So – no Performancing metrics, and no editor until I found out where Nick and Co. end up.
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Contextual ads operate much like traditional pay-per-click search engine ads. You bid for placement and pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad, but instead of your ads appearing in search engine results, they appear on web pages on other sites.
I like to compare contextual ads to ads you might find in a magazine. Pick up any special niche magazine and you’ll see ads for products or services related to the subject matter of the magazine as well as ads on subjects that might be of interest to readers in the magazine’s subscriber demographics.
Want a good reason to try contextual advertising? Think volume and exposure. Consider all the sites you visit each day on the Web. Most of these are candidates for contextual advertising. Cpxclick.com claims to have partnerships with over 500 search engine sites in the system already. For a company wanting widespread exposure on the web, I can’t think of another medium that has the potential reach of contextual advertising.