Is this new system heaven for publishers or hell for users?
Advertising online is an unsettled business. New ways to spread your name online and monetize your website traffic are still emerging.
Online advertising systems developer Kontera has created a new form of keyword-based advertising that is embedded in publishers’ paragraphs of content.
It’s called “In-Text” advertising and you could use it to generate more website revenue or more website traffic.
These new ads are placed in content, which is where people spend 85 percent of their time online, said Kontera Technologies Senior Vice President of Sales Bryan Everett.
When a user encounters an In-Text ad, it looks like an oddly formatted link. If the user drags a mouse over the link, a small pop-up window displays an advertisement.
An example of Kontera’s In-Text ads can be found here, at pocketpccity.com, a Jupiter Media site.
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New Relevant Advertising
The In-Text advertising system works similarly to Google’s Adwords system.
Advertisers create an ad and bid on keywords through Kontera’s ContentLinks system.
Those keywords and ads are matched by Kontera’s algorithm to relevant content in Kontera’s network of host websites. Host websites are owned by publishers that are looking to sell In-Text ads.
If Kontera finds a host website with content that is relevant to an advertiser’s keyword and ad, it turns a bit of the content into an In-Text link, which shows a little pop-up advertisement when it’s moused over.
If a user clicks on the ad shown, the hosting website gets 50 percent of the CPC revenue generated, and Kontera gets the other half, Everett said.
Advertisers bid on keywords and usually spend about 50 cents per click, but bids can sometimes reach three dollars, Everett said.
Not Just Ads
Aside from advertising, Kontera’s system can feature content, enhancing the users’ experience with your website.
In-Text links can show images, video, flash clips or previews of other webpages on your site.
For example, pretend a user is reading about frogs on a website. If the website has more information on African tree frogs on a different page, an In-Text link could show a preview of that page if the link is moused over.
The link could even show a short frog video.
This could create a very elaborate webpage for users, and it could create a very clever advertising medium for marketers.
That same frog website could have video ads for an African safari vacation embedded in its content.
“There’s a lot of interesting ways to utilize the adlayer,” Everett said.
Check out all the types of ads that ContentLink can serve by visiting Kontera’s site.
User Complaints
For advertisers and publishers, In-Text ads seems like a great new way to make money online.
Some users, on the other hand, have expressed outrage at the ads, saying that they are a violation of trusted content.
“We get nasty emails all the time from users,” Everett said, who writes off their concerns as a need for more relevancy in Kontera’s system.
“If we can build a product that is relevant and can have user-value to it, either from an ad or another information stand point, it is going to be accepted. And it is already being accepted because we get a lot of page views,” Everett said.
Everett adds that “if all users had their way, we’d probably have no advertising on the Web.”
There is, however, a way for users to opt-out of Kontera’s ads if they become overly annoyed.
The opt-out process is not obvious, but if the user clicks on the “?” button any of Kontera’s In-Text adds, they are directed to a webpage that gives them the option of opting out of viewing the ads.
The Future of Ads?
While Kontera’s system may not answer every problem you have with marketing your publication or monetizing your website, it could help.
In-Text ads seem like the next step in the evolution of online advertising as the industry moves further away from magazine-style space ads and closer to personalized advertising for every user.
Users might be annoyed with In-Text ads now (who enjoys being interrupted by ads?) but if Kontera’s system starts to deliver extremely relevant content, users could find themselves seeking out websites with In-Text.
Keep your eye on new advertising systems looking to enter the market, because you don’t want your publication to be left behind.
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