In this article we have already mentioned contextual advertising. But let’s take a closer look at it.
In 1997, Bill Gross put forward, patented and implemented the idea of selling advertising links that would be shown to users along with their search results – this is how contextual advertising appeared.
So, contextual advertising is an effective way to attract targeted visitors in a short time. By creating an advertising campaign, for example, in Yandex.Direct, you can very precisely configure the ad display. Thus, to achieve the most efficient use of the allocated budget. In addition to the standard region selection, you can specify in which block to show the ad, at what time and on what days to show or not show the ad. What requests to display. Whether to take into account the preferences of search engine users. And many, many other parameters. This is all very good. Surely, a well-designed advertising campaign will bring considerable benefit. But there are downsides.
Firstly, contextual advertising is not a cheap service, especially if your queries are high-frequency. If there is a lot of competition in your field, be prepared for the fact that you will have to part with a large amount of money.
Secondly, search engine users do not treat advertisements very well, and therefore there is a chance that many potential customers will pass by, although they will certainly notice your ad in the ad unit.
The third minus, perhaps, is not voiced by any of the advertising agencies, SEO and WEB studios. Maybe this is because very few people know about this minus, maybe just no one thinks about it or they just keep silent, there can be many reasons. Therefore, I will try to tell you as much as possible.
People who at least once wondered about making money on the network and tried to find this method, probably came across sites where it is proposed to perform certain tasks from advertisers and receive little money for this, as well as receive money for attracting other users to the site (referral system). As a rule, there are a huge number of tasks. The money for execution is different, it can be 5 cents, and one dollar, and much more. Among these tasks, you can often see something like the following:
You are required to:
- clear browser cookies
- go to the site using the link
- find ad unit on the page
- follow any of the provided links in the ad unit
- send your IP to “PM” for verification
After verification, you will be credited with money
The person who placed such a task is a kind of partner of a service that provides contextual advertising, it can be Google AdWords, Yandex.Direct or another service. He receives money from this service for the fact that users of his site follow the advertising links posted on his site. Exaggerated, but it looks something like this: When creating such a task, the webmaster pays 1 ruble for its execution, while he himself receives 3 rubles. Such a task completely kills the meaning of contextual advertising, since in this case we do not get the target visitor, but just a person who received his 10 kopecks for this transition, while we spent 5 rubles for his click.
Based on this, you will have to calculate the budget, taking into account the possibility of non-targeted transitions. How many percent of the transitions were not targeted remains to be calculated, alas, it is impossible. True, this disadvantage occurs only when you create an advertising campaign with the display of your ads on the “partner sites” of the service. You do not have to select this option.