Contextual advertising is a type of online advertising, which contains a headline, a text ad, a set of links to landing pages, and is displayed in the search engine output in response to a specific user query. This type of advertising works for two types of demand – formed (what you search for – so with a high probability they want to buy) and unformed (potentially want to buy, but not now).
Contextual advertising advantages
The main advantage of contextual advertising is that it is seen only by those users who may be interested in buying a certain product or ordering a service. Another advantage of this type of advertising is that in the search results it is above the organic output.
So why is this type of advertising so popular among marketers and business owners? Context has the following goals:
Increase sales.
Contextual advertising is a great tool with which you will get new customers immediately after running an ad.
Promoting an ad campaign
If you are running a promotional campaign, contextual advertising will help to make sure that the maximum number of people learn about it.
Increase of traffic
Thanks to contextual advertising, more target users will come to your website.
Promotion of a new product or service, launching a new product on the market
If you have a new product, the use of contextual advertising for its promotion is a relevant solution.
Increase of recognition
Contextual advertising makes the brand recognizable. We also recommend advertising useful articles and reviews. This will help show yourself as an expert in your field and increase user loyalty to your brand.
Among the advantages of contextual advertising are the following:
Compared to SEO, the positive results of which take quite a long time, contextual advertising will bring the first customers almost immediately after the launch of advertising.
There is the possibility of deep targeting – you can set in an ad as accurate as possible audience by gender, age, region of residence, etc. There is also an opportunity to choose the time of the show.
You can always see the statistics of the ad and determine where and at what time visitors came to your site.
If your ad doesn’t bring results, you can stop it or change your settings at any time.
You only pay for website clicks, not impressions.
You can set the price per click and budget for your ads
You can declare yourself and increase recognition, even if your site is not optimized for search engines.
Contextual advertising: examples
Where can ads be placed on Google?
Top displays – the ad is displayed at the very top of the organic results.
Bottom impressions – the ad is placed below the organic results.
Guaranteed impressions.
Types of contextual advertising
Search contextual advertising. This type of advertising is shown to the user during the search for a product or service. For example, if you enter the query “buy a laptop,” the search engine will show you at the top of search results 3-4 ads. All of these ads will match the specific request.
What is contextual advertising
Thematic contextual advertising. In this case, the ad does not appear in the search results, but on certain sites that are members of the affiliate network of a particular search engine. In this case, it may be displayed some time after you have entered a specific search query. For example, you are looking for some product or service on the Internet and you are browsing through several sites. A week later, when you may have already forgotten about it, you go to some news site and see an ad for the product you were looking for a week ago.
Each search engine has its own affiliate network. It includes only the most visited sites, and all of them are checked for quality.
Technology in contextual advertising
Contextual advertising has several technologies on the basis of which the ads are shown:
Context targeting – a technology that allows the contextual system to automatically analyze the content of site pages and show ads with maximum page content relevance.
Behavioral technology – with their help, search engines take into account the search history of each user.
Remarketing – this technology helps to show ads to users who have already been to the site, viewed product pages and added items to “cart”.
Setting up contextual advertising in Google Ads
Contextual advertising is set up in advertising accounts in Google Ads.