lunes, 23 de abril de 2007

CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING AND THE LABERYNTH MADE EASY FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Anyone who has tried to search the internet for information will know that it is a kind of endless network that extends and winds itself into branches upon branches of what one could imagine as the network of bronchioles that make up our lungs but that extends itself around the pulse of the worlds communications. It is possible to spend hours, despite the speed provided by wide band access to the web, to click and click until one reaches one’s goal of sought information or simply resigns to a tired digit and wrist.

Contextual advertising is simply the advertising which one can contract to have appear either on your website or blog, providing you with an income for the same, as if you were a magazine including advertising. This in fact is providing an income for some bloggers, people that write their own journal and that due to the interest raised by their writings receive the visit of thousands of internet surfers. As is the case of http://www.johnchow.com/, the blog written by John Chow a member of the large Chinese population in Vancouver, Canada, who reportedly in little more than 6 months has developed an income of more than 5,000 Dollars monthly and receives the visit of some 300,000 readers per month.

The other version of contextual advertising is that which anyone can arrange for the details of their website and a brief information about the same to appear alongside the list of sites which appear when someone carries out a search on internet using one of the major search engines, for example GOOGLE, YAHOO, MSN, etc. In this way the web provides a solution from the centre of the labyrinth outwards. Enabling any company large or small to find its way to its potential users or clients by choosing to appear alongside the information specifically requested by the person carrying out the search. For example a restaurant can request the details of its web page appear each time the name of the town where it is located is named in a search.

The cost of this advertising depends upon the words used in a search that you chose to appear alongside, the more commonly the word is used in a search, the more expensive the cost of the advertising, for example “Flight” or “Cheap Flight” are amongst the most expensive. Even so, the cost is only incurred when the advertisement is placed alongside the requested information, once an internet user has used your selected word in a search and that person has actually “clicked” upon your site.

So one could say that this is the most specific of publicity for which you only pay when your information has reached a person that has requested it.

Obviously, the larger the company, the larger its advertising potential, whoever, this does allow a small company to compete on equal terms with the big boys to the extent they chose. According to Enrique Dans of the publication "Libertad Digital" La tecnología configura todo un nuevo ecosistema, algo que cualquier profesional del marketing hoy en día tiene que conocer y manejar como la palma de su mano"

The only thing to be taken into account is that, even in its early days, there is already mention of click fraud in this kind of advertising.