Adverting in the modern marketing digital world is very flexible and tricky. Search engine mechanisms track all users’ behavior, browsing history, and spheres of interests, age, geographical location, etc. Everything is for business purposes, marketing, and advertising, aiming to catch the target audience and sell more. Today, we will speak about contextual advertising (read more here): concept, benefits, how to launch, price, and why you should consider using it for your business.
What is contextual advertising?
In simple words, contextual ads “fit” a particular contextual environment. They can be of two types:
- Search advertising;
- Advertising in the networks.
Every search engine has got a special system for ads. Google’s system is called Google ads.
How do Google ads work?
We will stop on every kind in more detail. So, search advertising. When you enter anything in the search bar, let’s say, pizza and pasta, the search engine shows you a number of results that suit your request the best. However, at the top, there will be a bar of results with a label “advertising”. These are contextual ads, which, as Google thinks, match with what you are looking for. As a result, these will be commercials from the pizza and/or pasta restaurants in your region, however, you were not looking for the restaurants. Thus, it is looking for the keywords and brings to the top Google ads with the closest keywords stuffing. In other words, it hunts for the “hot demand” users who are ready to buy/order at the moment. The system analyses the history of requests and offers the ads which may help right away.
When we are talking about advertising in the networks, the system is different. Google ads here are not aimed at immediate action. They are designed for deferred demand.
Let’s take as an example the same case with pizza and pasta. For instance, you were looking for pizza and pasta, opened a few pages (these can be websites of cafés and restaurants or recipes), read information, and then you may even close your browser and forget. However, Google will take into account this your interest, and the next time when you look for something, it may show you contextual ads which relate to the topic of pasta and pizza on the pages of other websites. You can even be checking weather forecasts and see ads about pizza and pasta.
Benefits of Google contextual ads
1. Easy to implement
Unlike other types of advertising, for example, behavioral, Google ads do not demand a lot of resources. They do not need to analyze long and complicated algorithms of user’s behavior and search history. All they require is a suitable contextual environment and certain keywords.
2. Not constrained by privacy legislation
Contextual advertising does not rely on intimate personal information for severe target advertising. It tracks exclusively the keywords entered in the search bar, visited websites, and general spheres of interest.
3. Brand safe
One of the benefits of Google contextual ads is that it does not take the user to the environment he/she would not like to go to. It helps the brand to maintain a strong and reliable reputation, taking care of the potential customer’s interests.
4. Relevant
First of all, the contextual advertisement is based on the user’s interests, something he/she has already been looking for. The search engine just forms a set of suitable ads that have relation to the general topic and, from time to time, repeats the exposed commercials.
How much do Google ads cost?
The price of contextual advertising depends on many different factors. The most important is the rank of the ad – the higher, the better. And the trick here is that you can not buy a place in the rank. The advertisers take part in the auction, but to pay more than the competitors does not guarantee that your ad will be exposed higher. Google analyses quality and the chances users will click on the ad. Google ads settings are not that easy, and it would be better if, for the beginning, you apply for the help of professionals to set and launch it for you.
