What Is Contextual Marketing

Contextual Marketing (advertising) is a form of targeted advertising for advertisements appearing on websites, blogs or as well as other media. The advertisements themselves are selected and served by automated systems based on the content (keywords) displayed to the user.

The system for contextual advertising works by simply scanning the text of a webpage for keywords and then shows targeted advertisements on the webpage based on what the visitor is viewing on that page.

These ads may be displayed on the webpage or as pop-up ads. For example, if the user is viewing a website pertaining to sports and that website uses contextual advertising, the user may see ads for sports-related companies.

You will also notice on the top and right hand side of your browser while you are searching for information that the search engines also utilize Contextual advertising to display advertisements on their own search results pages based on the keywords in the user's search query.

Contextual marketing may be viewed as marketing ones product(s) in context to the interests of the customers that one is trying to reach. Over the years, most businesses have evolved so much that they want to receive value for every cent invested. They have even more specialized and defined goals and they want their advertising to reach the right customers at the right time. This is why contextual marketing and advertising has been so popular due to it being very targeted for the advertiser.

For example, you may have the world's best looking most user-friendly website. However, this does not necessarily mean you will also have lots of people visiting it. You need some kind of hook to draw them there and to give them a reason to stay and explore it. This is where contextual marketing comes in. You will have to be willing to invest some money in search engine optimization so that your site is displayed first when a user searches for something in a search engine. This needn't cost a lot mind you. For example, the initial deposit for a Pay Per Click (PPC) ad campaign varies between $25 and $50. Some search engines will even provide a small amount of money as a starter bonus.

Contextual marketing works behind the scenes invisibly and it is totally based on the analysis of the webpage content that is displayed there. This gives the website visitor the ability to buy the product if they wish to, and all of this without ever leaving the website or blog. The simply reason for this is that the advertisement more often than not links directly to the web page where a purchase can be made or a lead generated depending on the goal of the contextual advertiser.

Proponents of contextual marketing say that it makes Internet marketing much easier. Before, it was much more difficult to target a specific audience with the kind of ads that they wanted to see. Today however, contextual advertising makes it possible for businesses to target a smaller and more defined group according to their buying habits, instead of users just being assaulted with millions of ads most of which have little or no relevance to what interests them.

Another reason that this form of marketing is used is mainly due to the fact that many online businesses just don't know or believe that it is to expensive to hire a web promotion consultant. In many cases you would be right, but finding the right person for the job, who understands Search Engine Optimization could actually save you many thousands of dollars and give your online business a much longer term effect with the free search engine listing.

The Google Company with their AdSense program was the first major contextual advertising program available to online business. It provides the webmasters with a JavaScript code that is placed onto their site or blog that displays relevant advertisements from Google's inventory of advertisers. Because the advertisements are more targeted, they are more likely to be clicked, which generates revenue for the owner of the website or blog. And in principle sales or leads for the server of the ads themselves. A large part of Google's earnings come from its share of the contextual marketing advertisements served on the millions of web pages that run the AdSense program.