Pay Per Click Contextual Advertising is Booming

by Kirk Bannerman

Published on this site: April 7th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

One of the early participants in contextual advertising was Google, with its AdSense program. With this program, Google shares pay per click revenue with a huge number of individual partner websites that carry a few pay per click ads that are distributed by Google. In essence, this creates a whole bunch of little pay per click locations (websites) throughout the Internet. Yahoo has a similar program called Yahoo Publisher Network and there will be many more contextual advertising programs in the future.

Conceptually, programs like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network are similar to what the computer hardware folks refer to as distributed processing. Instead of trying to draw everyone to a large pay per click search engine site, little groups of pay per click ads are spread widely across thousands of locations (websites) distributed all over the Internet.

Actually, this distributed processing or propagation technique is not limited to pay per click advertising. For example, Amazon uses a similar arrangement (called Amazon Associates) to sell the products it carries on amazon.com and ClickBank has a sales program called CBAdwords which operates in a similar fashion.

According my trusty Ouija board, it seems likely that most commercial hubs on the Internet will be shifting to this propagation concept as time progresses...all of those individual partner websites that carry the message/proposition will constitute the vast army of worker ants that keep the queen ant alive and healthy.

From a pay per click marketing perspective, these programs make brilliant use of leverage while providing highly targeted prospects for the paying advertiser.

There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call the "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue! Aren't these fun times that we're living in?

As these programs continue to proliferate, the individual webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid the temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used, these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you are providing to enhance the information and opportunities that you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a little pay per click money.

If properly used, these propagation programs can result in the classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster) and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing the ads. As in many things, moderation is important.

It's a constant sea of change, but the good things just keep on getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and the opportunities will just keep on coming your way.

The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery", but I don't think I'm far off the mark about where things are heading. With that, I'm off the soapbox and wishing you success in whatever you do online!

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.