Contextual advertising – a guide for beginners. contextual advertising

Every entrepreneur who aspires to successfully conduct business is required to know the features of modern business promotion. As they say, the engine of progress is advertising, the various forms of which today can turn any boring product into an object of desire for millions. One of these is contextual advertising, which became widespread with the advent of the Internet. Let's talk about it in more detail.

Contextual advertising is a special type of promotion of products or services on the World Wide Web. It represents advertising messages that seem to respond to the interests of the network user, expressed in the search queries he makes. The subject matter of such advertising messages coincides with inner mood and the buyer’s requests, which is where its strength lies - it does not impose a product, but rather helps to find the desired product.

This type of promotion is the most effective tool that helps organize a powerful flow of new clients. Each of us has more than once observed how a search engine offers to view contextual advertising after you enter a certain query. Marketers working with limited budgets increasingly prefer contextual advertising messages that show good results with active use.

Let's look at the difference between traditional types of advertising and contextual advertising. So, in the first case, advertising messages are placed on:

• television;
• radio;
• pages of the press.

In addition to advertising, it also contains entertaining or informative content, which users of all three types of media study in Everyday life when accessing broadcast media, that is, when reading a newspaper, watching TV or listening to the radio in the car, for example. The purpose of advertising placed in traditional media is to directly distract from this content and interrupt the user’s activity. This causes terrible irritation to users, creates an aura of obsession and raises all the worst feelings, sometimes not benefiting the business, but, on the contrary, setting the enterprise back.

Advertising that stands out according to the direction and context extracted from search queries does not work as a switch of user attention, but on the contrary, as an appropriate semantic message, a new idea, a necessary or Additional Information, the request of which was generated by the user independently.

What types of advertising of this type exist?

Advertising in search engines

The message issued corresponds 100% to the user request. In order for you to see everything that the company wanted to show, contracts are concluded with advertising networks of search engines that are responsible for placing advertising messages. We are talking about the popular Yandex in Russia, the Internet giant Google, etc.

The cost of placing contextual advertising on the search query results page varies depending on the prestige of the specific area of ​​the page where the message is posted. Prestige is determined by the effectiveness of promotion, in other words, visibility. The less noticeable the location, the lower the cost, as well as the effectiveness of the impact.

Typically, contextual ads are placed in the following parts of the search results page that opens.

1. At the top, as if embedded in the search query. This method The demonstration is called " special accommodation" The position is considered one of the most profitable, since at first the user will pay attention not to the standard search queries, but to advertising and will most likely follow the top links.
2. On the right side of the page, the so-called guaranteed demonstrations, are placed by search engines. It is believed that this position is less profitable, since the user will pay attention to it only after the top lines of the search engine, in addition, according to statistics, the level of user trust in them is lower. However, the area to the right of the search results is in demand; placements on it cost a lot and are readily used for promotion.
3. Below the area to the right of search queries, guaranteed demos are dynamic demos, their number can reach five units. Their demonstration is carried out alternately, the cost is not high compared to other types. Of course, they will not be able to show results such as special placement or guaranteed demonstrations, however, their result is the high efficiency of promoting the company’s advertised product.

Choosing dynamic display makes the most sense for companies that want to increase the traffic of their electronic resource. We are talking about news portals and similar organizations that need to constantly generate traffic to operate.

Thematic advertising

A distinctive feature of this subtype is the divided cost of transitions. She literally shares. If search advertising was paid to advertising systems and the dividends were paid in full, then in the case of thematic advertising, the amount of the transition payment that “falls” into the account is divided in half: one part to the advertising system, the second to the platform that broadcasts the advertising message - the website.

According to the rules, advertising messages must correspond in topic to the resource on which they are posted, but in practice there can only be closeness to the context or even a lack of similarity. This phenomenon has official name“Behavioral targeting.” The setting for displaying messages that are not similar in topic can be configured by the customer, having discussed in advance this moment with the executing system.

Thus, visiting a site with recipes for proper nutrition, you may unexpectedly stumble upon an advertisement for the sale of roller skates.

By disabling the ability to set behavioral targeting, you exclude the display of advertising messages that differ from the direction of the site; impressions will continue only for those that are similar. Returning to the example of the recipe site about healthy eating, let’s assume that the advertising message based on it will be similar in topic to the sale of immersion blenders, multicookers, spice sets, etc.

Development of the sphere

Since the advent of this promotion technology, the contextual advertising market has continued to expand and develop, gaining well-deserved popularity. The dynamics of development are very noticeable. On average, the contextual advertising market grows by 50% per year compared to last year’s figures; if translated into monetary terms, this figure can be estimated at tens of billions of units of Russian currency.

Previously, large companies used the services of traditional promotion channels, giving preference to television. As you know, the cost of serious promotion on TV is exorbitant, despite the fact that the effect from it does not always pay off as expected. Now this method of promotion is considered outdated, and also not as effective as before. Today, the solvent and active part of the population is increasingly abandoning television, throwing “zombie boxes” into the trash. Their refuge is the Internet, which promptly provides all the necessary information that modern man used to absorbing in huge quantities.

• articles with key queries;
• reference links;
• banners;
• teasers, etc.

Clients willingly perceive the advertising flow on the network, turning intentions into targeted actions that are so desired by advertising customers. Contextual advertising is the most preferred way for customers to present their goods. According to statistics, by 2015 it accounted for about 40% of the entire online advertising market, while banner ads accounted for only 10%. In comparison, the remaining directions are losing ground and becoming less popular. This is especially true for teaser advertising, due to its use to promote sites with false or vulgar information.

Internet advertising systems

• Google
• Rambler;
• Yandex.

It must be said that the Rambler system is practically not used today; preference is given to the Google network (for the entire Internet space) and Yandex (mainly Runet). Their effectiveness and fame influenced the displacement of rivals who had no chance of success.

The service from the Internet giant of the planet is called Google AdWords. The platform is high-tech and provides for use great amount functions. The settings are so subtle, and the budget required to achieve efficiency is so small that the platform has gained a certain level of popularity literally in one blink.

Contextual advertisements are displayed using Google AdWords both on the search results page and on partner sites of the advertising network. Let's look at the list of benefits offered by Google AdWords to users.

1. It's easy to manage advertising promotion and track the progress of the campaign. The site's interface is intuitive and does not require specialized knowledge of working with the program. Despite the fact that beginners are advised to initially work with a similar platform on Yandex, it is quite possible to figure it out the first time.
2. Attracting users who are members of the target audience to the advertiser’s website occurs literally in the first minutes of the launch of demonstrations. Yes, the work of the site is so efficient. In addition, a certain flexibility in setting up a campaign, which takes no more than 40–60 minutes, also saves time.
3. Setting the budget available for launching work on a daily basis is set independently by the advertising customers. The boundaries are so flexible that even with a tiny budget you can achieve some success. In addition, no one forbids adjusting it during the campaign, increasing or decreasing it.
4. The more clickable the ad, the more profitable it is for the resource to place it in positions that are profitable for display, even if you did not pay extra for them and your competitors pay a higher price per click.
5. You can also select sites among those offered by the network that are most suitable for advertising in your opinion, either independently or with the help of network consultants.
6. The cost per click compared to a similar action on the main RuNet search engine is lower, which makes Google AdWords incredibly popular. Attracting traffic becomes more profitable, as does product promotion. However, be careful, this option does not apply to all business areas.
7. There are no “empty” payments. This means that standardized payments for the period of use of resources are not required; payment is made exclusively for completing the target action - a click. Otherwise, the system does not withdraw money from the advertiser.

Now let's talk about the Yandex advertising service, called Yandex.Direct. According to statistics, the impact of this search engine is comparable to the same number of people as the largest channels in the country. These are the benefits of using Direct.

1. Determining the budget framework, as in the case of the service from Google, is determined by the customer independently, therefore, not well-promoted companies and popular products, but even small enterprises just starting to operate can take advantage of the service. commercial activities On the market.
2. The demo setup is flexible; for this purpose, the developers have created a functional program interface. Customize the region you want to display, the time of day, day of the week, in general, everything that your entrepreneurial soul desires. It may seem that some functions are pointless, however, delve deeper into the research and you will understand: each one works to your advantage.
3. Viewing promotion statistics is available at any time, night and day, with various statistical “angles” available regarding viewing the work of just one element of the company or the entire mechanism as a whole.
4. Payment for the service is per click, not for displaying the message to the network user. Transferring money for real clicks makes working with the site much more profitable than if you had to pay for each impression. Setting the price is also determined independently by the advertiser, but, as in the previous case, the area chosen by the resource for displaying the advertising message on the website or search query page depends on it.

Impressions on the advertising platform based on the Yandex search engine are selected according to the auction method: who will give the most. If the cost per click is higher, the location is more conveniently given to a generous advertiser. When the amount is the same for several companies, the evaluation and selection of the leader is determined according to the “clickability” of the link. This is beneficial not only for the campaign customer, but also for the service that receives payment for clicks.

Direct ads are displayed on the following platforms:

• search results pages;
• Yandex advertising and external network;
• map search results;
• issuing blogs;
• on the Market.

The minimum cost of transition at Yandex is thirty kopecks; an order is placed by depositing an amount of one thousand units of Russian currency. Divide the second amount by the first and get a pretty good result.

Some features and advantages of such a phenomenon as contextual advertising have today made it possible to conduct a business remotely, while the owner can be located in absolutely any populated or uninhabited area on the planet, the main thing is that a device with Internet access is always at hand. The geographical remoteness of the market from the enterprise is no longer a myth, but a reality that allows development without having solid capital to launch and promote the company’s activities.

Let's discuss the obvious benefits of this tool for promoting and attracting traffic. Interestingly, many of them apply not only to business owners, but also ordinary people surfing the Internet in order to find the right information or the right products and services.

1. Working with contextual advertising allows you to achieve the attraction of specific people who make up the bulk of the target audience of the enterprise. The fact is that Internet users help the advertising company on their own by making search queries. He receives the most relevant, fresh and interesting, as well as relevant responses to the request in the form of advertising messages. It turns out that this is beneficial to both: the customer and the user, since one makes a profit, the second realizes his own intentions as efficiently as possible.
2. Short deadlines for obtaining real results. The return after launching contextual advertising is almost instantaneous, because for each Internet request, in each time unit, a search is made by many different people. It turns out that already in the first seconds of displaying the message, the first potential client will visit the customer’s website, and literally in 40-50 minutes you will receive the first order and payment for it. Incredible, right?
3. No need for a large advertising budget. Using the above services, you can start an effective advertising campaign for a thousand units of Russian currency. In addition, contextual advertising can work both solo and in conjunction with other means of online promotion offered by search engine services:
   1. articles with key queries;
   2. banner ads;
   3. teaser links, etc.
4. Setting the parameters for a future campaign to promote a product or service is very flexible; ads are configured according to all the parameters necessary for the advertiser:
   1. geographical boundaries;
   2. the high cost of a single transition;
   3. time of ad display;
   4. age restrictions for users, etc.
5. The analytical tools of the sites are so powerful that they allow you to receive all the necessary information as the campaign progresses and at the end of its completion, which will subsequently assist in further promotion and increase its effectiveness in general.
6. The absence of intrusive coloring of contextual advertising is the main and most important thing important advantage in terms of user reaction to messages. He was waiting for him and wanted to see him. For example, when making a search query about the best multicookers of our time, you will probably see at the top or side of the search page an offer to purchase an ultra-fashionable and functional kitchen item that can fry, steam, bake, pickle, ferment, stew, etc. The benefit of displaying messages of a contextual nature is that it helps to orientate in hitherto unknown areas of a person’s life.
7. In addition to the lack of intrusiveness, contextual advertising offers the user an easy perception due to the convenience of the demonstration format. So, half of the screen is not blocked by a window with an advertising message that jumps out from behind its borders, on the sides of the site with important information Constant teasers with pictures in .gif format do not blink. Contextual messages are not at all overloaded with unnecessary paraphernalia, for this we give them an additional plus.
8. Extremely informative. Contextual advertising messages are short but succinct, and this is very strong advantage. They provide enough information to convey it to the user, while consisting of:
   1. a title with the main semantic content;
   2. a brief explanation;
   3. link to go;
   4. pictures (sometimes).

As you can see, it’s impossible not to appreciate the merits of contextual advertising. Reading about it, it seems as if this is a real panacea from the world of advertising, working for instant and most effective promotion goods. However, despite all the advantages and real uniqueness of contextual advertising, it also has some disadvantages. To get a complete picture of this promotion tool, they also need to be studied.

Disadvantages of contextual advertising

We would like to immediately reassure the wary entrepreneurs. The disadvantages of this type of promotion are so insignificant compared to the advantages that they seriously affect the impression of it. the most effective tool will not affect. However, in order to conduct successful activities, it is necessary to keep them in mind in order to promptly regulate the emerging consequences and eliminate advertising “gaps”.

1. Short working period. Simply put, the duration of the effect arising from contextual advertising does not long term actions, due to the constant need to replenish the budget, which is depleted during the campaign. In addition, constant reconfiguration of campaign parameters is required to improve its effectiveness. Compared with others, short term less in effective ways promotion on the Internet, for example, articles with key queries, you can notice that in the long term without changing the settings, contextual advertising of a product or service cannot exist.
2. The risk of not recouping the investments made with further profits. It turns out that when you set a certain budget for promotion using contextual advertising, you are likely to overspend it. An investment in contextual advertising will pay off only when the profit exceeds it several times, preferably 5-6. For example, you are selling certificates for cosmetologist services with a nominal value of 1000 units of Russian currency. Getting one real client costs you 200 rubles. The benefit is obvious, because you get 5 times more than you spent. You can continue to use this tool. Otherwise, you shouldn't do this. That is, if an advertising system charges a company 700-1000 rubles for attracting a client, sooner or later the company will go to the bottom.
3. For some business niches, promotion using contextual advertising is not profitable. Most often, this tool is used in Internet marketing and outside of that it may be useless. We are talking about the sale of goods offline, which are not usually sold on the World Wide Web. Of course, in 2017, some of them are starting to conquer the online space, such as food. Previously, cakes were ordered directly from pastry shops, now they are looking for private customers who can create masterpieces of stunning beauty and taste at home. However, areas such as oil and gas entrepreneurship, for example, will forever remain non-virtualized, therefore, they will not be able to make a profit with the help of contextual advertising.

Proper use of contextual advertising

As you can see, the promotion tool under discussion has an overwhelming number of advantages and some disadvantages. Let's discuss how to deal with the negative aspects and make the most of the positive ones.

Having little experience with advertising a product or service through the context of user-requested content, it is quite natural to feel some uncertainty. However, this does not mean that you should definitely turn to the services of professionals in this promotion industry and pay not only to advertising systems, but also to them. Think for yourself, such budget overruns are absolutely not profitable. By working with automated services for conducting advertising campaigns using context, you will benefit much more.

The services themselves help you avoid getting caught up in common user mistakes by telling you in pop-up guides how to maximize your benefits and efficiency using settings. They actually take over the full functionality of professional agencies, doing it free of charge.

How is the cost of an advertising campaign calculated using the advertising tool discussed?

When a businessman decides to resort to contextual promotion of a product or service, the first question that interests him concerns the method of generating the cost of a click. We have already said that the two most popular platforms for conducting advertising campaigns on the Internet, Google AdWords and Yandex.Direct, require the advertiser to independently determine the cost directly, taking into account the minimum established by the system. So, for a service from your favorite Russian search engine, this minus is 1000 units of currency.

A click is a transition to the customer’s advertisement, clicking on a link leading to a site demonstrating the promoted product. It is for this transition that the advertiser pays; more precisely, the cost of clicking is subtracted each time from the total amount in the entrepreneur’s account on the server.

The price of this transition is formed based on the following components.

1. The advertiser's area of ​​business activity is, simply put, a market niche. Clicks that transfer users to the websites of financiers, businessmen, private medical organizations, construction companies, etc. are expensive. For them, the transition price starts from 50 rubles and ends at around 600 rubles. It costs much less to target an action in a campaign to promote ordinary things, for example, household and kitchen appliances, cosmetics, sports equipment, in general, consumer goods. It should be noted that demonstrations in any niche are of an auction nature. Those who pay more are shown on the best area of ​​the page, plus, the frequency of impressions increases when it comes to dynamic demonstration under guaranteed impressions in right side pages.
2. Method for setting parameters for displaying advertising messages. When you start using the advertising services described above, you immediately receive default display parameters from them, which are considered the most effective, but at the same time expensive, since they imply that the message is located in an expensive place on the page, which increases the likelihood of taking the target action. This means that the cost per transition will also be as high as possible. Thus, in order not to get into trouble with automatic settings, carefully set the parameters that are relevant for the company manually. Since the service interface is intuitive, you can easily handle this task yourself.

This method can reduce click costs even in the most expensive market niche, while maintaining the level of quality of display and obtaining visible results.

By the way, you can find out the cost per click for different areas of activity of entrepreneurs using various online services. For example, the Mutagen web page knows Yandex.Direct prices very well.

In addition, the search engine itself will be happy to provide information on the estimated cost of promotion using a budget forecasting service, which allows you to obtain an estimate and calculation of the cost of a month of operation of the service.

Let's sum it up

Do you want to get clients quickly and cheaply, being confident in the final result? Contextual advertising is the ideal way to achieve what you want. Of course, its cheapness is relative for some areas of business activity, however, all costs will certainly pay off in the process of using the tool.

When starting to work with promotion services, remember that contextual advertising does not work equally effectively for all existing market niches. If you doubt your actions, we advise you to hire a professional - a director who is responsible for the correct setup of contextual advertising and its subsequent adjustment.

If your company is promoted exclusively on the World Wide Web, you can use contextual advertising alone or in combination with other popular means. Read the article carefully to learn all the features of this tool and decide whether to use it. We wish you good luck in your development and success in your business!

Video - How to attract only interested audiences using contextual advertising

Any business, even the most profitable and interesting at first, can eventually begin to, as they say, stall. Customers pay less and less attention to the product, activity drops, and the entrepreneur faces the problem mentioned in the title of this article - how to remind potential buyers of yourself? The correct answer is advertising. However, modern print and outdoor advertising shows its extreme ineffectiveness - around potential client there is such an amount of it that he subconsciously develops a dislike for the product. The ideal way re-establish yourself and attract customers - order contextual advertising. What is it and how to use it? More on this later.

Contextual advertising – what is it?

Today, this type of advertising shows its high efficiency and relevance time after time. It is a text link or banner that announces you and your company to the audience that is most interested in it. Modern contextual advertising, the prices of which will pleasantly surprise anyone, is highly targeted - in other words, it hits your target audience, leaving only a small percentage of potential buyers and clients unreached.

Example of contextual advertising ads in Google, Yandex

How contextual advertising works

In fact, the principle is very simple and lies literally “on the surface”. According to the logic of placing contextual advertising, when making a search query, the user wants to see not only useful information, but also advertising links are useful for those who want to make a purchase or place an order. In other words, if a user searches for information using the tag “ plastic windows”, he is most likely interested in purchasing such windows, installing them or servicing them. By taking advantage of the opportunity to order contextual advertising, you will ensure that your advert is seen by precisely those users who are interested in similar information. Thanks to this feature, contextual advertising, the prices of which are not so high, is much more targeted than traditional advertising.

Today there are a lot of services that can correctly place contextual advertising and ensure that as many potential clients as possible become familiar with your company. For example, a web service, which is distinguished by the absence of additional commissions, automatic settings and the presence of a robot that manages advertising, which, you see, is indispensable for beginners. In the same time common species advertising, such as banner or transit, can reach best case scenario 15% of your target audience, which does not at all correspond to their cost.

Earning money from contextual advertising

Contextual advertising today is beneficial, not only for those who want to use it to remind people of themselves, but also for third-party sites whose creators place advertisements on their own. Part of the money from indexed clicks goes to the site creator, part to the provider, so with contextual advertising, spending a very small amount of money, you can earn many times more - if only you had the desire, but such an opportunity is provided.

Why contextual advertising?

To summarize, let’s say once again why ordering contextual advertising is profitable and convenient for everyone:

1. Focus only on the target audience. Such advertising is seen only by your potential clients and those who may well become them, as a result - increased attention to your company and the product/service it produces.
2. Low price. You can order contextual advertising at a price much lower than its print counterparts. At the same time, the return on its activity will be many times greater. You will feel the effect in a short period of time.
3. Practicality and convenience. In order to order such advertising, you can always find a professional who has been practicing for a long time. As a rule, contextual advertising does not require great job designer, which means its creation will be much faster and cheaper. A specialist will help you target your advertising to the needs of your target audience.

As follows from the above, contextual advertising benefits everyone. However, like any other advertisement, it will only work if it is in in the right hands, run by a real specialist. It is in finding such a specialist that the main task of the advertiser lies, and contextual advertising will not be slow to remind those you want to reach about you.

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Once upon a time a man hunted for goods. In the world modern technologies the product is intensely hunting for a person.

The statement seems to be a pun divorced from reality only to those people who have never looked for information on the Internet. Active users networks constantly notice that their requests are remembered in the system, and helpful advertising on sites tempts them into themed purchases. To some this may seem like an invasion of personal space, but the fact remains that we are all at the mercy of the daring and “spyy”, but still so appropriate.

In order for a visitor to click on an ad, that is, to have the desire to follow a link to more detailed information on the site, advertising needs, firstly, to be in place, and secondly, to visually attract a potential buyer. Let's consider different kinds and the types of contextual advertising that must cope with these tasks.

Types of contextual advertising: text, banner and video advertising

It appears to the user either completely as an image or as a picture with text. There are static, animated and interactive banners. The latter, as the most intricate ones, invite the user to perform some action with the banner (for example, click on a certain place, solve a problem, etc.).

Types of contextual advertising: search, thematic, social media advertising

Such advertisements are always marked “advertising” and correspond word for word to the user’s request. The money for its placement goes undividedly to the account of the search engines (Yandex, Google, Begun).

In the second case, the trail of all previous user requests is reflected in the subject of advertisements on the resource. For example, if you were interested in building materials, and are now reading an article about clothing, then be prepared to see advertisements there for the renovation and decoration of apartments.

This type of interest tracking is only possible if you stay within the same search engine. For example, if you looked at something on Google and then opened Yandex, the first will not transfer any information to the second, and contextual advertising will not appear.

The profit from a click is distributed as follows: half is taken by the advertising network, and the other half goes to the creator of the site on which the advertisement is placed - the webmaster.

How contextual advertising works

The task of any advertising- present the product so that it is bought. Traditional advertising operates blindly; it strives to reach as many people as possible and thus increase the likelihood of being noticed by people interested in the advertised goods. Second selling method– convince a person who is generally indifferent to the product of the need to purchase.

How contextual advertising works- qualitatively different. She is trying not to interest, but to specifically find people already interested in the product. But how do you know who needs what product? The answer is to get into the deepest thoughts of users. Nothing supernatural, considering that a person easily produces them through his queries in search engines.

Contextual advertising is focused on keywords that are entered by the user. By sending a request or visiting a page of a website, he activates the springs of settings that are hidden from him in advertising campaign advertiser, and ultimately sees an advertisement in accordance with what he wanted to find.

Benefits of contextual advertising

• Point hit. The user sees advertising only for the product that he independently searched for on the Internet. This is beneficial for the advertiser, as he finds a more interested client who is easier to persuade to buy. This is also convenient for the visitor, as he will quickly find what he needs.
• Quick return. Considering the huge number of people accessing the World Wide Web, usually from the first hours of an advertising campaign, product sales increase significantly.
• Available budget. You can start an advertising campaign with a starting capital of less than a thousand rubles.
• Flexibility in settings. Advertising campaign parameters can be easily changed based on time of day, budget or location.
• Complex offer. The user is looking for a specific product, but contextual advertising, ahead of desires, offers him related products or services about which potential buyer I haven't had time to think about it yet. For example, if he was looking for a mosquito repellent, he may also see offers for purchasing a mosquito net.
• Unobtrusive format. Contextual advertising does not bore you with sound effects, does not try to blur the entire screen or blind you with multi-colored lights. Her style is an easy proposal, made as if by accident.
• Conciseness. There is nothing superfluous in contextual advertising, like in the outfit of a stylish woman. There is an image, a product title, a brief explanation and a link to the advertiser's website.
• Detailed analytical analysis. After the campaign, you will have all the performance indicators in front of your eyes, as well as weak spots, which can be optimized. This way, next time you will achieve even better results.
• Simplicity. You don't have to be an experienced professional to set up the campaign yourself.

Disadvantages of contextual advertising

It doesn't have as many disadvantages as advantages. Let's look at them:

• Short duration of action. The effect of such advertising is fleeting and requires replenishing the budget and adjusting the settings. In contrast, providing dense traffic for a long time.
• Possible cost overrun if the setting is incorrect. It is necessary to clearly monitor that the clicks you pay do not exceed the income from the sale of the advertised product
• Ad blocking by users. Some irreconcilable fighters against advertising install blocking programs and all kinds of plugins on their devices. Advertising will not be able to “reach out” to such network visitors.
• Clicking advertisements The point is this. The advertiser pays the service for each click on his ad. And unscrupulous competitors can “scream” this ad many times in order to force the site owner to fork out money. No money, no real clients.
• Unsuitability for certain areas of business. There are areas whose characteristics make any marketing tools ineffective. We are talking about large grocery chains, gas and oil monopolies. This also includes all other areas where buyers are looking for a product or service offline.

How is the price for contextual advertising determined?

The cost of the CD will depend on the following characteristics:

1. Niches, in which advertising is placed. The most expensive clicks traditionally relate to construction, medicine, finance and business. The conversion cost drops when the ad is placed in a lower-cost niche: Agriculture, inexpensive everyday goods, recreation.
2. Advertising campaign settings. It can be configured in different ways, up to the loss of the entire enterprise. For example, the system by default suggests using the maximum effectiveness parameter in the advertising location. This means that it will be placed in the most crowded places. You pay only for clicks - transitions to the site, and not for the number of impressions. The cost per click, which you can set yourself, can be less than a ruble. However, remember that the systems operate on an auction principle. This means that those advertisers who pay more per click receive the most profitable positions and thus have more traffic.
3. Placements on the page.

Here they distinguish:

• Special accommodation– no more than three advertisements at the top of the page above the search results. The user is one of the first to see your ad, which is why this position is so profitable and costs more than others;
• Guaranteed impressions– one to four ads to the right of the search bar (they are called ad units) or at the very bottom. The price per click here will be lower than the price for special placement;
• 1st place– a place in the header of guaranteed impressions.
• Dynamic impressions– ads that are shown from time to time and alternate with each other

Contextual advertising services

Now there are two leading services on the Internet: .

You can contact an agency specializing in contextual advertising, or try to master this wisdom yourself by mastering automation services.

Procedure for conducting an advertising campaign

1. Key selection. First of all, you need to choose a keyword consisting of a word or phrase that best matches the essence of your product. The service will display your ad whenever it detects a match. You need to know how to choose keywords. For example, you cannot choose “how to build muscles” if you sell hookahs.
2. Creating an ad. This is the creative part of the job. Writing skills will help with this. You need to be able to push the user to the coveted click, using a minimum of words and armed with an organic design.
3. Determination of effectiveness. It is necessary to consider which settings will be most successful for a given business. It is very good and convenient when the analytical programs Google Analytics or Yandex-Metrica are installed on the site.
4. Launch of advertising. When all the steps are completed, the last and most important thing remains - uploading advertising into the selected automation system.

How to choose a keyword or phrase

You need to follow two steps:

• You receive the initial data with a list - what queries users entered with your expected main word. They can be obtained from various sources, including Yandex Wordstat.
• Analyze the data and divide words into key and excluded (junk) words.

For example, if you sell TVs, you can include in the “key set” the combination “TVs in installments”, but remove “in Krasnoyarsk”.

The whole point of this work is to ensure that your ad is not shown in vain to queries that are not related to your topic. For example, if you don’t add the combination “in a landfill” to your negative keywords from some eccentric’s request “is it possible to find TVs in a landfill,” then the system will return your ad to any queries with this word, and you don’t need that. On the other hand, it’s a shame to miss out on a potential client by choosing the wrong keyword.

For such analytical work, you can use numerous search and selection services. key phrases, such as Mutagen.

What else can you do to make your advertising campaign successful?

1. Track statistics. At the end of each advertising day, you can find out how many users saw your advertisement, and how many responded to it, that is, switched to. Based on the data received, you decide what actions to take: you can refine the keywords, increase the bid, or correct the ad text.
2. Try to achieve the maximum matches between the request user and the essence of the ad. This is how its clickability is determined. As a result, you get the success rate of your ad.
3. Set up time targeting. This means that you should only scroll through ads at times when you can respond to customer requests. For example, in the settings you can exclude night hours.
4. Set up geographic targeting. The ad will only be shown in a specific country, region or city. If you are not ready to deliver your goods to other regions, you should not hope that the buyer will pick it up themselves.
5. Add remarketing. Contextual advertising has a very convenient and required function– remarketing. It exists to continue communication between a user who has already visited your site and your advertising. When such a user visits other sites within the same platform (Google AdWords or Yandex Direct), your ads are shown to him.

Frankly speaking, any advertising is an art, and setting it up is not an easy job. Often, many businessmen come to the conclusion that it is better to entrust contextual advertising of their products to a specialist. Which one? Let's look at this in the next paragraph.

Who is a director?

So, you have decided to launch your advertising campaign, trusting the professionalism of a contextual advertising specialist. This modern fashionable profession is called a director (from the English “direct” - to direct). It’s logical, because the user is redirected from one location to another by clicking on an advertisement.

Most of the so-called directologists are freelancers; you can find them on numerous “free” sites. But it should be understood that such specialists are most often self-taught or multidisciplinary computer “geniuses” who take on any job for which they are paid. Agency specialists remain the most reliable category of directologists.

Wherever you decide to hire a director, first make sure of his competence.

Please note the following points:

• You are not his first client. He has completed successful cases on Yandex direct or Google Adwords (usually the director is so highly specialized that he “sits” only on one site. And of course, he has detailed reports on previous campaigns).
• A good director should clearly present to you his strategy of action - what budget will be allocated, how many clicks will be “gained”. He must be interested in promotion.
• Ideally, it would be good to hire a specialist who understands your field of activity. Selling pillows and selling tractors are not the same thing. And yet, don’t rely too much on fulfilling this point: you can spend your whole life searching for a highly specialized pro, while your competitors have already set up an advertising campaign and are catching clients in their networks!

Glossary of contextual advertising terms

CPM– cost per 1000 impressions – fixed price per thousand impressions.

CPC– cost per click – cost per click paid by the advertiser.

CTR– click-through rate, or clickability – the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions.

WITHR– conversion ratio – the ratio of those who clicked on the ad and the number of visitors to the site.

Targeting– targeting a specific category of users.

Negative words– words that are not related to the service itself, but are present in a phrase with a keyword.

Semantic core– words or phrases that most accurately reveal the essence of the goods or services offered by the site.

Landing– “landing page”, a platform with a detailed description of the product, most often represents . The user goes to it after clicking on the ad.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we note: statistical data invariably speaks in favor of contextual advertising. This type of advertising is gaining momentum, proving its effectiveness by increasing the profitability of sites. It is a powerful tool for quickly attracting new customers.

There is only one thing left to advise: don’t take my word for it, test new tools through personal experience.

Which are dedicated to a specific topic. This phenomenon is called contextual advertising. It brings income not only to advertisers, who thus receive targeted clients, but also to web developers. In addition, this is income for resource owners. They get paid for clicks on their site. The advertiser accrues funds for clicks. In the article we will talk about the types of contextual advertising, what its cost depends on and about the intermediary companies that organize it.

Varieties

• search;
• thematic;
• media;
• with personal targeting.

You see when you enter a query in the search bar. The following picture shows an example of contextual advertising.

Blocks with it are constantly located under the search bar or on the page on the right.

Thematic advertising

Display advertising

The most “elegant” representative, which is a graphic or text-graphic block. Below you see an example of contextual advertising called display advertising.

Photo display advertising

• advertising with personal targeting;
• designed for a specific region;
• advertising that is shown at a certain time;
• designed for language settings;
• advertising for mobile devices with Internet access.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of contextual advertising

Now let's look at its main advantages:

• Advertising itself finds a buyer. This is called finding the target audience.
• You receive the first responses (sales) immediately after the launch of the advertising campaign.
• Does not require large expenses. You can try to advertise your product even with a budget of 300 rubles.
• Together with different types contextual advertising, you can use other means of promotion: SEO articles, teaser advertising.
• You can customize your own advertising campaign depending on the quantity Money, location, time of day and night. You set the parameters that interest you to achieve the effect.
• After conducting an advertising campaign, you will receive information about the effectiveness of the methods. Then you can choose what gives the maximum result.
• Contextual advertising meets the user’s needs and helps to navigate the sea of ​​similar products, compare prices, quality characteristics.
• Unobtrusiveness. Nothing pops up or blinks. Ads are neat blocks that do not interfere with the user. If advertising still causes inconvenience, then you can safely hide it. In the parameters, the user can indicate his reluctance to see advertising of relevant content.
• type of advertisements, despite its small size and unobtrusiveness. Contextual ads, as a rule, have everything a future buyer needs: a headline, an image, an explanation, a link to the site that sells the product.

Disadvantages of contextual advertising

• Short term compared to SEO promotion. The effect of any type of contextual advertising is quick, but short-lived. SEO articles, for example, may not attract traffic as quickly, but over a much longer period of time.
• Overspending due to choosing the wrong settings in contextual advertising services. If you use the settings incorrectly, there is a high risk of losing all your profits. For example, you sell school desks. The cost of one desk is 7,000 rubles, and your profit is 2,500 rubles. If you set up your advertising campaign incorrectly and one click costs 4,000 rubles, then, naturally, you will not receive income, but will go into the red.
• In some areas of trade, contextual advertising is money down the drain. This applies to goods that people are accustomed to purchasing offline.

How to use the advantages and combat the disadvantages of contextual advertising

If you do not have much experience in this matter, then you should not rely on luck, because it concerns your money. Experts advise that you definitely turn to automation services.

This excellent helpers in setting up contextual advertising for beginners and more. The service will help you avoid making mistakes and not blowing your entire budget at once. They will also tell you how to make the most of the capabilities of a particular type of contextual advertising.

How much does contextual advertising cost?

• The minimum amount that needs to be deposited into the system.
• The money that needs to be paid to the contractor or freelancer who will do the setup.

Let's consider the first point using the example of the popular contextual advertising system Google AdWords. The amount here will depend on:

• industry niche of your products or services (your topic);
• geographic audience coverage (geotargeting);
• number of impressions per day (time targeting).

Now let’s look at what the cost of contextual advertising depends on in more detail.

Subject. The range here is very large, since in some industries a budget of 5,000 rubles will be enough for you. for a month, and in others it is the price of one click. To decide on a budget, professionals typically first create a list of keywords.

Geographic coverage of the target audience (geotargeting). Everything is simple here. Small region - little money. If you decide to cover an entire country, then the budget must be appropriate.

Time targeting. Here the amount will depend on what time your advertisement will run. For round-the-clock work you will have to pay a tidy sum. Analyze what time your target audience is most often online. This will save you a lot.

Lost impressions due to budget

Let's go back to the AdWords account again. Here in the parameters there is a “Quick Statistics” tab. Once you click on it, you will see “Percentage of lost impressions on the search network due to budget. The function is incredibly useful because it shows whether you have enough money on your balance to fully cover the demand for your goods or services.

It happens that after you have launched an advertising campaign, you need to allocate more funds for promotion, because you are losing profits due to the fact that you cannot catch all the users who are interested in your services.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to immediately say how much money you need to budget for. This will only become clear after testing the advertising campaign.

Pay for what?

What exactly do you need and can pay for on the service:

• Clicks. (PPC - pay-per-click). This is very convenient, since funds are withdrawn from the balance only when the client clicks on the link.
• Impressions. If branding is your priority, then it’s worth investing in displays. For every 1000 scrolls of your ad, money will be withdrawn from your balance. This is only available for the display type of contextual advertising.
• Pay for conversions. Most interesting view payment. Money is written off for specific actions of the target audience: phone calls, applications, user registration on the site, payment for a purchase. Many entrepreneurs are attracted by this opportunity.

If you hire an agency or freelancer to promote your brand who knows how to set up basic types of contextual advertising, then, naturally, you budget for his commission.

It usually consists of:

• percentage of the advertising campaign budget;
• fee for the agency's work per month (freelancer's salary) or payment for a specific amount of work performed.

Directologist - contextual advertising specialist

In order for your money not to go down the drain, and for you to get maximum profit from contextual advertising, you should contact a professional in this field. A director will help you. The word comes from the name which is the most popular in Runet.

You can look for a director among freelancers. There are a lot of exchanges where they offer their services and immediately announce the cost.

What criteria should you use to choose? What should you pay attention to when looking through a specialist’s portfolio?

1. An experienced director (targetologist) should have completed projects with detailed calculations and positive reviews. Such reports are called cases.
2. This person must be well erudite. Watch his reaction when you talk about your industry. If a person frankly does not understand what we are talking about, then he is not suitable for you
3. The director is ready to contact. Immediately describes the principle of operation and announces where your funds will go.

Is it worth working with contextual advertising?

Any type of contextual advertising is not a panacea, and you should not place too much hope on it. It is best if you use it in conjunction with other online and offline methods of promotion, because using only this tool, it is unreasonable to cover the entire target audience.

Since in this material we will touch on the basics of contextual advertising, for your convenience we have divided it into main points.

What is contextual advertising?

Contextual advertising is a type of advertising on the Internet that is represented by a text or image ad and is shown depending on the user’s request (context). The advertiser himself chooses for which queries and on which platforms his site’s advertising will be shown. There are two main types of contextual advertising: thematic and search.

This post from the editors of IM will help you understand the basic concepts in contextual advertising, make it clear what contextual advertising is, how it looks and works, as well as what systems and services are most often used to run advertising on the Internet.

Search engine

Search contextual advertising will be shown to the user if his request matches those specified by the advertiser in his company’s settings. The main advantage of this type of advertising is that the user himself shows interest in a certain product and writes about it in the search bar; all we have to do is say (with the help of advertising) what we offer this type product.

This advertising works in all major search engines Yandex, Google, Rambler, Mail, Bing, Yahoo, Badoo and others. At the same time, the algorithm for displaying advertisements for each individual system may differ, as is the case, for example, with Yandex and Google. And a search engine like Badoo (the Chinese analogue of Google) is partly generally closed, since it is possible to place ads there only while in China.

Thematic

Thematic contextual advertising will be shown to users on sites that participate in affiliate programs ( Google AdScense, Yandex Advertising Network). The display of which particular advertisement will be carried out depends on the last queries entered by the user or the sites on which subject they visited (which is also context).

Most likely, you yourself have noticed more than once that after searching for, say, “buying boots,” on the pages of other sites and in in social networks Advertisements begin to appear offering the purchase of shoes. This, by the way, is the main advantage of thematic contextual advertising, even if the advertisement was not viewed or was not clicked on in the search results, it still remains chance to attract a user to your website and tell about the product.

But there are topics for which displaying advertising based on user behavior is prohibited ( medicine, products for adults), so they can use another type of thematic contextual advertising - contextual targeting or display by sites. For example, on a forum about medicine, in a discussion thread about denture implantation, an advertisement for dentistry may be shown.

Could it then happen that your advertisement will be shown on a low-quality website or one that violates Russian legislation? No, because only verified sites with high traffic can participate in affiliate programs, so you don’t have to worry about the company being compromised due to advertising on a “not good” site.

Retargeting and remarketing

We have placed retargeting and remarketing in a separate section because they can be used without connecting the first two types of context.

Contextual advertising systems

Yandex.Direct

IN last years, Google has taken away a significant part of the Yandex audience thanks to mobile traffic, but nevertheless, more than 2,000,000 people use Yandex search every day! This is the largest Russian search engine. Therefore, advertising in Yandex Direct enjoys enormous popularity. In addition, Direct has a simpler setup.

• on Yandex search results pages;
• on the sites of the Yandex partner network ().

The choice of which ad will be shown for a specific request and for a specific user is determined automatically by Yandex algorithms based on compliance with the topic, rate per click, CTR, city and other indicators.

Google AdWords

More advanced interface, to which Yandex Direct has recently been moving, offers. In addition to a variety of tools for setting up and analyzing the effectiveness of advertising, which requires more painstaking setup, Google allows you to advertise your site not only in Russia, but throughout the world (except for China and the DPRK).

By analogy with Yandex, advertising is divided into search and thematic (KMS), and in addition to the pages of search and partner sites (including Bing and Mail), it is intended to be displayed on the pages of Google services (Maps, Gmail, Merchant, YouTube, Pictures, etc.).

Wherein You can set up ads separately for YouTube and Gmail, in the form of a letter or your own video, which significantly expands the advertiser’s ability to reach his target audience.

You can also separately set up advertising campaigns for mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), which, depending on the target audience, allows you to make targeting more accurate. And in advertisements, in addition to standard clarifications and quick links, you can configure the display of goods and services with their cost.

Geographic targeting can be set not only to a region, country or city, but to a separate area by setting a point in the desired location on the map and specifying the coverage radius.

Contextual advertising in 2017-2018

If a couple of years ago, you could simply collect a database of relevant keywords, write advertising texts and track bids, but now, with the rapidly growing cost per click and competition, you need to be able to work with all possible formats and targeting. Find exactly those visitors who will bring profit, and not just visit the site. Find your way by testing different approaches and formats. Because there is no longer one correct approach to setting up advertising.

In addition, if previously there was a significant difference between Yandex Direct and Google AdWords, today it is becoming less obvious, and in the future it will cease to exist at all. This is because Yandex is introducing more and more new tools in order to catch up with its foreign competitor in terms of the set of tools.

It is worth noting that contextual advertising in 2017 becomes more personalized, targeting opportunities for different audiences are expanding. Growing importance correct settings for those users who search from mobile devices. There are more ad formats. Analytics capabilities are increasing.

All this serves as the basis that the contextual advertising market will only continue to grow in 2018. More and more new advertisers will come, who will be more aware of advertising on the Internet and will be more demanding of contractors. Nevertheless, this direction is one of the most promising on the market for at least another 5-10 years.