So, today I have for you an introductory article on contextual advertising. I’ll tell you what this type of advertising actually is, what types of contextual advertising there are, platforms where you can advertise, and I’ll also write about the advantages of contextual advertising. This is currently one of the most effective sources, so you need to give it due attention.
It turns out that contextual advertising acts selectively and is shown only for specific requests, therefore, if the ads are configured correctly, the advertisement will have a high quality score, which means there will be customers and sales. Therefore, you need to understand that contextual advertising is a tool aimed at increasing sales and attracting new customers via the Internet.
The main feature of contextual advertising is information and the uniqueness of the sales offer. If these two factors are correctly aligned and skillfully presented to potential clients, then there will always be a large number of sales. That's why there are so many on the Internet who make little money, and few who make big money. And based on this, I make it my main goal that readers of this blog begin to skillfully use their online advertising, thereby increasing their profits.
What types of contextual advertising are there?
1) Banner advertising is a still or animated image. This type of advertising occurs quite often because it is noticeable and has a high conversion rate, which has a positive effect on the result of placing a banner on the site;
2)Video advertising is a type of advertising that uses video. Today, it is a very common method of promoting goods and services and is gaining even more popularity every day. Most often, this type of advertising can be found when watching regular video clips, when at the beginning of the video a 15-20 second video with advertising pops up. There are also various kinds of viral videos, when some large company, using its product or service, creates short video, and within a few weeks it becomes a hit on the Internet.
3) Text advertising is the most common type of advertising that is found absolutely everywhere. This type of advertising is a regular text ad, sometimes with a picture, and a mandatory link to the advertised resource. There are two types of text advertising: search and thematic. Search advertising is shown in search results on a website when there is a specific search query specified by the user. A search query can be carried out both on search sites and on regular sites that have a search bar, so the search can be carried out both throughout the Internet and on a specific site. An example of search advertising is shown below.
Thematic advertising is shown on the page of a specific website if the topic of the advertisement matches the user's needs. Such advertising is not shown in the search results of search sites, but on the most ordinary sites and is an addition to the content of the site pages. Thematic advertising is also called behavioral advertising because it corresponds to the interests and requests of users.
What platforms are there for contextual advertising?
In order to host a search or thematic platform, there are quite a few services, but all of them are mainly aimed at working through two Internet search giants - Yandex and Google. These two search engines have special services for contextual advertising, namely Direct and Adwords, respectively (I will describe them in detail in subsequent articles). Everything that appears in search results on these two sites is search advertising, and everything that is posted on partner sites is classified advertising. All advertising is configured through the interface and after moderation and account replenishment, your ads begin to be shown.
I will not write why you need to use these two sites to advertise your products or services. Firstly, Nikolay has already written about this, and secondly, you should understand perfectly well that these are the two most leading search engines on the Runet, which means that the entire population of our country uses these sites when searching for something they need. Therefore, it is when working through these two sites that all the main traffic is concentrated.
How contextual advertising works
contextual advertising is arranged quite simply. There is always something that needs to be advertised (a product, service, website or something else). There will always be those who need what is advertised. And there is always an intermediary - in this case, these are online advertising platforms. The person who advertises, himself or through specially trained people, places advertisements on these sites. The final result in the form of applications or calls will depend on how well the advertising is set up. Therefore, I constantly tell everyone that if there is no knowledge in this area, then it is better to entrust your advertising to professionals, thereby saving not only time, but also money.
After the advertisement has passed verification, it is launched. And as soon as the user’s query in the search bar matches key phrase your ad, a potential client will see your ad (although it often happens that ads are not shown in the right positions, but I will talk about this in other articles). And if your ad is of interest to a potential client, he will definitely go to your site. Then everything depends on the quality of the site, the sales offer and, of course, the price. A lot depends on the price of a product or service. Therefore, when the ads are set up well, the website is well made and the USP (unique selling proposition) is well developed, then I am more than sure that your business will always go up.
Benefits of contextual advertising
1) Attracting only the target audience - as a rule, ads are shown only to potential customers who are already interested in your product or service. Based on their requests, your ads are displayed, thereby bringing visitors to your site who will definitely buy a product from you or use your service. At the same time, only you decide for which queries your ads will be shown and for which ones not. And I’m not talking now about complex advertising setup schemes that are aimed not only at the absolutely target audience, but also at those who are not particularly looking for what you offer. This separate category clients, so-called “warm” and “cold”. For them, setting up advertising is of a completely different nature (I will definitely write about this in subsequent articles).
2) Geotargeting - when running ads, you can choose countries, regions and localities where your ads will be shown. And here it doesn’t matter that you are in a completely different region or even country. Thanks to this, boundaries are erased and you can easily scale your business.
3) Pay only for users - it doesn’t matter how many times your ads are shown. You only pay for specific ad clicks to your website. This is very beneficial for your business, as it only increases efficiency. I would also like to note that advertising platforms have a system of protection against invalid (unfair and erroneous) clicks, the so-called clicking of ads, thereby your budget is safe. And if the system notices that there was a click, the money will be returned to your account.
4) Full control of advertising - the entire advertising process is under your personal control. All detailed daily statistics are available to you. You are always aware of how much was spent for each transition to the site, how much each application cost you, how many users came to the site, what was the conversion of advertising and the site. And if you are suddenly not satisfied with something, then you can stop advertising and make adjustments to improve efficiency and re-launch advertising, thereby saving your advertising budget. It turns out that advertising completely depends on you and the tasks that you set when launching this advertising.
5) Small budget to start – running advertising does not require multi-thousand dollar infusions of funds. Sometimes 500 rubles a day is enough to receive daily applications that flow into clients. Of course, the budget depends on the goals and objectives that you want to achieve from advertising. But the big advantage of contextual advertising is its accessibility. This is especially important for beginning entrepreneurs. The only thing I want to note is that it very often happens that people, having no experience in contextual advertising and limited by budget, begin to create an advertising campaign themselves and after 2-3 weeks they have neither money nor clients. This, unfortunately, happens quite often. Therefore, approach setting up advertising very responsibly.
6) Quick results - you can create and launch an advertising campaign within 24 hours, provided that the advertising is not large in volume. All you need is to create advertisements competently and efficiently and replenish your personal account, and already on the first day after the start of displays, receive the first visitors to the site and applications. Therefore, this type of advertising has an immediate effect. If the advertising campaign is large in volume (usually online stores), then creation and launch can take up to 3-4 days. In this case, you will receive your first visitors within 4-5 days.
Conclusion
Contextual advertising has huge advantages over other advertising tools. Currently, without contextual advertising, you are losing a large flow of potential customers, which ultimately affects your profits. And it doesn’t matter whether your business is online or offline. Contextual advertising is ideal for any type and sector of business. Advertising is the engine of trade. And the performance of your business will depend on how you use it. But the final decision is always yours.
I wish everyone a large flow of clients and huge profits. To be continued.
Ordinary Internet users who come to the Internet in order to have a pleasant and useful time, but do not work here, often complain about the dominance of advertisements.
But, alas, it is not possible to correct this in the coming years. All website owners know what is contextual advertising and how you can make money with it.
In the meantime we're talking about about money, and quite often about big money, dreams of an Internet without advertisers will remain dreams.
What is contextual advertising (CA) and what does it look like?
Contextual advertising is a way to conquer the market
How often have you visited a website and been confronted with a pop-up advertising window, the content of which had nothing to do with you? I think often.
Here I am recently, visiting the site with psychological tests, was forced to close a huge banner that offered me equipment from a Russian online store.
What is the likelihood that, not living in Russia, I will fall for such an inappropriate offer? None!
Whether it’s contextual, which, appearing on sites, meets all client requests. That is, the chances that the client will click on the link increase several times.
That is why more and more website owners give preference to advertising campaigns over other types of promotion of goods and services.
In addition, unlike pop-ups and other types of advertising products, contextual promotion is designed solely for the goodwill of the client.
The user is interested, which means he clicks on the link, but if he is not interested in the offer, he passes by.
Despite the fact that a contextual offer does not relate to violent methods of promoting goods and services, this type of advertising has a fairly high coefficient of usefulness precisely due to its focus on a potential client.
If you meet these conditions, you can count on big sales and big earnings.
What does contextual advertising look like on the Internet?
Every active Internet user has seen KR on websites more than once, but may not have realized that it was her.
Let's turn to the most popular type of CD - the one that is posted in search engines such as Yandex and Google.
For example, let’s enter the topic of today’s material into both one and the other search engine and get the following images on screenshots: 
On both the first and second screens we see links that are located at the beginning and are marked “advertising”.
KR is not always located immediately after the search engine line before links that are not advertising; sometimes we can see offers in the upper right corner of the screen, for example: 
- static - usually these are the top few lines, such guaranteed impressions that they will remain unchanged no matter how many times the user enters the same thing into the search engine;
- dynamic – located after the static one, the addresses of advertising sites are constantly changing.
Goals, characteristics and advantages of contextual advertising
This type of advertising has many advantages over other types of advertising products, and it also has a number of unique characteristics.Characteristics of contextual advertising
- This advertising product stands out for its rather flexible characteristics settings., which is why targetologists are given ample opportunities to promote a product/service to the market.
That is, you set the settings yourself (geography, display time, topic, etc.) depending on what audience you want to attract.
The ad is shown only to users who may be interested in it.
While the audience that is not interested in these goods and services remains unreached.
It is also the employer who determines how much this transition will cost.
Clear control over the effectiveness of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Each of the resources has systems that allow you to monitor how effective your text or banner is, and whether the money you spent on its placement pays off.
High performance, especially when compared with other advertising products.
Owners of resources who ordered contextual advertising, and through the settings found exactly their client, were already convinced of its effectiveness in the first few weeks: the number of purchases increased.
Goals of contextual advertising
“Our audience is housewives, over 30 years old, of average income, because the product is not cheap, etc.”
Based on the client’s wishes and knowledge of the audience, advertisers offer an option for an advertising video or banner.
- Increase sales and, accordingly, profits.
- Expand your customer base.
- Promote to market new product and/or service.
- Unwind new company(resource) that she started working only recently and has not yet managed to acquire regular clients.
- Minimize traffic.
- Expand the knowledge of customers (including potential ones) about a brand, product line or service.
- Conduct an effective advertising campaign on the Internet.
Advantages and disadvantages of contextual advertising
A contextual offer, like any other advertising product, has both advantages and disadvantages, although the number and weight of the advantages practically neutralize the effect of the disadvantages.
- Reasonably priced, especially when compared to other types of advertising products, such as pop-ups with links or videos.
- The ability to indicate countries and cities whose users will see your CD on websites.
- High level of advertising campaign effectiveness.
- The ability to control money spending and check how much investment in the Kyrgyz Republic is paying off.
- Attracting your target audience and filtering out non-target ones.
- Costs are incurred only if you click on a link, regardless of how long your ad is on the site.
- The unobtrusiveness of the ad, which does not irritate users, but arouses their interest.
- Full control over your advertising product and spending on it.
- A convenient format for the client that is easy to understand.
- The speed of launching an advertising campaign - CR appears almost immediately after setting all the settings.
- The ability to study your audience in detail in order to know who to address the message to.
- The result of the advertising campaign, which you will see quickly enough or not at all, which will give you the opportunity to change the settings in time.
- The effect of an advertising campaign does not last too long, so you constantly have to adjust the settings and replenish the budget.
- There is a risk of making a mistake with the settings, as a result of which you will not find your target client and waste money.
- The inability to use the Kyrgyz Republic in some areas of business, for example, the sale of oil and gas products.
Contextual advertising is different types of popularization of goods and services
All contextual advertising that is on the Internet can be divided into two main types:
There is another classification of contextual advertising depending on the type of ad itself:
The obvious advantages of using contextual advertising are described in detail in the video:
What is contextual advertising on different resources and how much does it cost?
Contextual promotion is good way make money both for site owners and for resources that host CDs.
It is not surprising that the most popular services have an interest in popularizing this advertising product.
Yandex and its Yandex.Direct system.
Yandex is the most popular search engine on the Runet, so if you need to promote a product or services on Russian market, then it is better to use this system.
Google and its Google Adwords system.
The main advantage of this resource is the opportunity to promote your product not only among Russian-speaking, but also among English-speaking audiences.
The Google Adwords network itself covers over two million resources on which your KR can appear.
The interface is quite convenient, and the tools are extensive, so there will be no problems with the settings.
Begun system, which cooperates with Google, Rambler, and other popular services.
One of the most effective types of advertising is contextual advertising. Thus, according to Yandex, the volume of this market is increasing annually by 40%, the client response to search ads reaches 5%, while in display and banner advertising this figure on average does not exceed 0.5%. To achieve a good effect, you need to know the rules for using contextual advertising and follow the technology for its use. Let's talk about them.
Kirill Samoshonkov,
General Director, Novatika, Moscow
In this article you will read:
Effective contextual advertising can seriously improve the situation of any company. Online advertising platforms offer several placement options - text ads, media-contextual (text and banner) and simply media banners. Most experts rightly believe that media and media-contextual banners are more suitable for image campaigns (they work on visual memory and are an analogy to traditional advertising: the client saw and, even if he didn’t go to the site, remembered you), and for advertising goods and services it is better use text ads - effective contextual advertising.
Contextual advertising - ads with search results that are displayed in the most prominent places on the Internet page. This is usually the top left corner (the first one to four links) and the right margin. The main sites (more than 90% of the volume of contextual placement), as you might guess, coincide with popular search engines - Yandex, Google, Rambler, and services for advertisers are called Yandex.Direct, Google.Adword and Begun, respectively.
The principle of contextual advertising is inherent in its very name: advertisers' ads are shown when there is a contextual match with keywords in the user's request. Thus, advertisements for the installation of plastic windows will be displayed when requesting “installation of double-glazed windows” or “ plastic windows prices”, and the ad “40% discount on LG vacuum cleaners” will appear upon request “buy a vacuum cleaner” and “promotions on household appliances LG".
What makes contextual advertising effective?
Due to reaching directly the target audience, only those users who are looking on the Internet for information about a specific product or service, effective contextual advertising has a very high response and is considered one of the best promotion tools. That’s why it’s very popular: there are millions of advertising campaigns a year on major Internet platforms. The advantages of contextual advertising are that it is accessible (promotion on the Internet through context can be started with a minimum budget) and the fact that the client himself can regulate the intensity of promotion in accordance with specific tasks.
The main task of contextual ads is to get a potential client to click on your ad and go to the site. An example of contextual advertising is considered very good when the share of customers who go to the company’s website reaches 5–7% total number who saw the contextual ad. Although in our practice there are examples when this share reached 30%.
Caution doesn't hurt
Despite its apparent simplicity, this method of promotion requires the advertiser to take himself very seriously, knowledge of the theory and tools of performance management. Moreover, now the sphere of Internet technologies is in a stage of rapid development and it will be difficult for a non-professional to keep track of the latest innovations for competent online promotion. Therefore, as part of large campaigns in highly competitive markets, planners, writers, and analysts are brought in to develop contextual advertising.
If the resources to complete a task are limited and do not allow you to use the services of promotion specialists, you need to prepare as much as possible to independently conquer the peaks of the context. At a minimum, so that due to ignorance of the specifics of the tool, the company’s annual advertising budget is not wasted in just a week.
For those who decided on their own, without the help of intermediaries and advertising agencies(and there are already more than 2000 of them in RuNet) launch a contextual advertising campaign, now there are a huge number of tips in the form of detailed and clear instructions on the websites of context providers, and you can also find advice from professionals in this market online.
Designed for everyone
Almost any business, even the most niche one, will find its consumers through context. Whether you work in the b2c or b2b market, there is no difference. If buyers of your goods and services are online, then one of the shortest ways to reach them is contextual advertising. The modern tools here are so flexible that you can find your client, even if there are very few of them on the Internet.
For example, one of our clients is a manufacturer of mobile and prefabricated concrete plants. It is clear that there are few buyers of his products, but the settings that the sites provide allow you to bring a stable number of target consumers to the client’s website. Moreover, the advertising campaign budget remains low, and the results are effective.
Site selection
As I said earlier, today there are three main providers of contextual advertising - Yandex.Direct, Google.Adword and Begun. The audience is more or less balanced everywhere, the only difference is in the nuances. It is believed that the Google platform is chosen by the younger generation with a technical bent, Yandex is used by people of the middle generation, and the older generation prefers Rambler.
In addition, advertising opportunities are actively developing in in social networks VKontakte and Facebook. An undoubted advantage of social media is its approach to reaching an audience. If the advantage of contextual advertising is that customers are identified by their queries, which they enter into the search bar, then here, thanks to the personal data voluntarily provided by participants, it is possible to target the display of ads by gender, age, marital status, position, interests and many other parameters, including the mobile operator used.
Hello, dear friends. Today we will talk about contextual advertising in the form of a review.
From the article you will learn what is contextual advertising, its types, advantages and disadvantages, what its cost and effectiveness are - let's look at real examples.
The material below will help you understand the features of contextual advertising and clearly see how it is placed on the Internet.
1. What is contextual advertising and what is its peculiarity?
If you are an active Internet user, then most likely you have seen such advertisements in search results and on various websites. Increasingly, marketers and entrepreneurs are using it to promote products and services.
2. Types of contextual advertising
2.1. Search advertising
Appears after a person clicks the “find” button by entering their query into the search bar.
For example, "plastic windows in Moscow":
2.2. Thematic advertising
These ads can be either similar in topic (close to the context of the page) or different from it.
If it is disabled, then only ads that match its content will be shown on the site.
(The figure shows the correspondence between the content of the site and the advertisement)
If behavioral targeting is enabled, then the site visitor will see those ads whose topics he previously requested in the search engine.
For example, on the website about culinary recipes Camera ads will be broadcast if a person has recently searched online “where to buy a camera”.
3. Dynamics of the contextual advertising market
Over the past 5 years, this market has been growing at a gigantic pace and ranges from 10% to 60% per year. In monetary terms, the bill amounts to tens of billions of rubles.
Companies that previously spent their advertising budgets on television are moving to the Internet. Banners, SEO articles, teaser ads have become popular tools for attracting customers on the Internet.
But here, too, the balance of power has changed towards the use of contextual advertising, and this is due to its obvious advantages, which I will discuss further.
The figure below shows the ratio of two popular types of advertising in 2014-2015:
4. Leaders of the contextual advertising market for 2015
- I am index- Yandex.Direct system
- G o o g l e- system Google Adwords
- Rambler- Begun system
Google and Yandex are now noticeably ahead of Begun due to their popularity and effectiveness.
Having a number of features and advantages, contextual advertising today allows thousands of people to run their business from anywhere in the world, working in those markets that are geographically remote from the entrepreneur himself.
For example, you can be located in Novosibirsk and at the same time sell cement in Moscow, while earning money based on Moscow prices.
5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of contextual advertising
The benefits of its use are obvious both to advertisers and to ordinary Internet users who are looking for goods and services here.
Let's look at them in more detail.
Advantages of contextual advertising:
- Accurately hitting the target visitor. The user himself searches for those goods and services that are shown in ads (this is beneficial for both advertisers and search engine visitors);
- Quick return on advertising. You launch an advertising campaign and within a few hours you receive the first applications (sales);
- Minimum advertising budget. You can start advertising with a budget of 300 rubles. Contextual advertising can be used either separately, increasing the amount of funds for it, or in combination with other tools (banners, SEO articles, teaser advertising);
- Flexibility in setting up an advertising campaign. The big advantage here is the flexibility to customize your ads based on your budget, geography, time of day and other parameters to achieve maximum effect;
- Powerful analytics. After running an advertising campaign, you will have all the necessary data on its effectiveness and will be able to “tweak” any settings in order to get better results in the future;
- Relevance (compliance) with the interests of the user. As they say, you wanted a party - here you go! :) You were looking for an iPhone, you will only see ads with iPhones. Are you planning to build a house and want to compare brick prices? No problem! Contextual advertising will help you navigate the huge number of proposals on this topic;
- Convenient format of perception. No pop-ups, annoying sounds or flashing images on the whole screen! Neat, easy-to-read, short advertisements - all this makes this type of advertising both effective and unobtrusive;
- Information content. Despite their compact size, contextual ads have all the necessary components to convey the necessary information: a picture (pictogram), a main semantic heading, an explanation and a link leading to the advertiser’s website.
However, they are not so significant compared to the benefits of its use.
Disadvantages of contextual advertising:
- Short duration of action. The quick effect of such advertising does not last long; you constantly need to replenish the advertising budget and adjust the settings of the advertising campaign. This is especially noticeable in comparison with SEO promotion, which allows you to ensure a stable flow of traffic over time;
- Risk of overspending if configured incorrectly. If you set up your advertising campaign incorrectly, the likelihood of losing money will be very high. For example, if you are selling Cell Phones via the Internet and it costs you 500 rubles to attract one client, and the profit is 2,000 - 3,000 rubles, then this type of advertising is a good investment. But if the cost of a click is unreasonably high due to incorrect settings of the advertising campaign, one client can cost you 3,000 thousand rubles or more, which will eat up all your profit;
- Uselessness in some areas of business. Contextual advertising is a good marketing tool on the Internet, but sometimes even it turns out to be useless. There are niches in business where such advertising will not work. These are large grocery chains, oil and gas monopolies, as well as all other areas of business where customers buy goods or services based on recommendations or look for them exclusively offline.
How to use the advantages and combat the disadvantages of contextual advertising
When you have little experience in launching contextual advertising, you don’t feel confident, or you just want to try running a campaign yourself, we suggest mandatory use contextual advertising automation services.
They will help you avoid mistakes in setting up campaigns, eliminate cost overruns, and allow you to use the maximum opportunities of this type of attraction. Such services can practically replace a professional contextual advertising agency, and for free.
6. What determines the cost of contextual advertising?
One of the most important indicators when using contextual advertising is the cost per click.
The cost per click is directly affected by:
- Niche in which contextual advertising is placed. For example, traditionally expensive and competitive niches are: business, finance, medicine, construction. In these topics, the cost of a click can range from 10 to 1,500 rubles ( 25 $ ). Niches with lower competition are: hobbies, entertainment, cheap goods (consumer goods) with an average price per unit of goods from 100 to 1,000 rubles. Please note that contextual ads in a particular niche are shown according to auction principle. That is, whoever paid the most for their ad will be promoted by the search engine to the most clickable (effective places). The cost of contextual advertising in this case consists of the total price for all clicks of your advertising budget;
- Method of setting up an advertising campaign. Typically, contextual advertising systems, when creating an advertising campaign, by default offer you to use the strategy “maximum efficiency”. This means that your ads will be broadcast on the most expensive places in search results and appear where the probability of clicking on them is highest. Accordingly, the cost per click will be maximum. This is not always justified, since for the same money you can get more clicks by simply optimizing the settings of the advertising campaign when creating it. To reduce the cost per click, you need to know how to properly set up contextual advertising. Then in any, even the most expensive niche, you will be able to receive transitions to your website at the lowest possible price. At the same time, the quality and volume of traffic will be maintained.
In order to find out the cost of a click for various key queries for Yandex, I recommend using the service. Here you can “break through” any key query and find out the level of competition based on it, average price per click, the cost of guaranteed impressions, the price of entry to special placements and much more.
Yandex also has its own tool for estimating the monthly budget of a future advertising campaign, which is called “Budget Forecast”
If you want to achieve maximum returns from your advertising budget, but do not have sufficient knowledge and experience, contact a professional director.
This is the name of the in-demand profession of contextual advertising specialist today.
This term was based on the name of the advertising network - Yandex Direct, since most entrepreneurs (advertisers) in RuNet launch their campaigns through this network.
To find such a specialist, you can go to the remote workers website fl.ru. Dozens of contextual advertising specialists hang out here.
But, you should not rush to make a choice and you need to know what criteria such a specialist must meet.
How to find a good director - 3 important criteria
Criterion 1. Has completed projects with proven quantitative results
It is very good if you cooperate with a contextual advertising specialist who has positive reviews and successfully completed cases with detailed calculations in numbers.
Criterion 2. Well understands the key business processes in your niche
The broader the horizons of the specialist with whom you plan to work, the better. Tell him about your business and look at his level of erudition.
After all, this person will be involved in a very important component of your project - attracting clients.
Now your director is the engine of trade in your business!
Criterion 3. Draws up an advertising campaign strategy with you
Let your specialist tell you what advertising budget he plans to spend and how many leads (clicks on ads) he expects to receive.
Ideally, the search for a director begins with friends who have already made a profit thanks to his high-quality work.
If you yourself become a good specialist in setting up contextual advertising, then at a minimum you will be able to sell your goods and services at a high profit, as well as provide paid assistance to other entrepreneurs (companies) in this matter.
8. Conclusion
This concludes our review and now you know what contextual advertising is, what types it is divided into, what features and advantages it has.
What is a franchise in simple words — full review concepts for beginners + real examples of opening a franchise businessIn order to start working with contextual advertising, you need to understand the basic meaning of its purpose.
At one time, when I was just starting to work with contextual advertising, my mother asked me:
What do you do at work?
At that time, I was already working at the agency and was an intern. It was not easy to get this fundamental meaning into her head... But I found one simple example that absolutely accurately deciphered the whole essence of contextual advertising.
Let's imagine.
You got up early in the morning and are in a hurry to get to a meeting. When you drive out onto the highway, it becomes clear that there is still time to drink a cup of espresso, and then right on the road you will see this:
I think most likely you will turn off to have a coffee!
Only, unlike this example, the arrows are posted not on the highway, but on various sites on the Internet.
What is Yandex Direct
This is a system that allows you to place contextual advertising on Yandex and on the sites of its partners. Ads are displayed based on a request in a search engine (Search advertising)
or on thousands of other sites where a potential client may be located (Classified Advertising).
In other words, we can show your ad in the first positions of Yandex tomorrow if you do everything written in these instructions!
What is Google Adwords
Again I want to remember about pointers and arrows).
Let's imagine that we see a super creative sign that generates strong interest in the product! For example, we see an advertisement for a Ford Mustang!
We see it from afar and are happy because we want to see these monsters live.
But there is one thing... As we get closer, we realize that this sign is located above a garage cooperative for lovers of restoring old Ford Mustangs. One of the owners bothered with advertising to sell his Ford.
This, of course, is a very far-fetched situation, but in my practice this is what happens!
What are the advantages and disadvantages of contextual advertising?
Now let's talk about the most interesting part!
The main advantages of contextual advertising:
Quick launch and first results
Convenient for calculating economics and profitability
Massive involvement of the target audience
Quick checks
Let's look at each of the points.
Quick and easy launch of contextual advertising
These numbers are displayed provided that the specialist does everything correctly:
But now we are talking about correct and high-quality tuning.
Why is 2-3 days so fast?
Why is contextual advertising better than SEO promotion?
Compared to organic SEO promotion, this approach is really fast! In SEO, you can reach such high positions in at least a couple of weeks (for low-frequency queries).
Compared to SEO, you don't need to create a huge website (with a lot of pages).
I'll tell you a secret!
You can start even without a website! This can be done using Yandex Business Cards! In other words, without having a website, we can reach the top three Yandex results for any request.
Contextual advertising, convenient for calculating savings and payback
One of the strongest advantages of contextual advertising is the ease of calculating effectiveness.
Such easy settings will be enough to calculate the cost of attracted applications or calls.
But if you want to work with deeper numbers like ROI (return on investment), ROMI (return on marketing investment), DRR (ad spend to ad revenue), etc. , You need
In other words, we can easily download statistics on advertising campaigns from the interface and generate a report for analyzing advertising campaigns.
Here's a small example of how this can be done:
Here it is clearly clear what day:
how many transitions did we receive (Clicks)
how much did the transition cost (CPC)
what was the consumption per day (Consumption)
how many applications were there, how many calls were there, and how many of both were there (Appeals)
how much did one call cost (CPO)
what is the website return (CR)
Contextual advertising is convenient for optimizing and increasing advertising costs
After generating such a report, it becomes clear to us how to influence this or that figure.
For example, we can reduce average cost one click in contextual advertising.
Thus, we will reduce the cost of one targeted action from the site, due to the fact that we will purchase clicks much cheaper.
Or, for example, increase the number of clicks per day by expanding the limits on daily spending in contextual advertising.
Contextual advertising as a tool for mass involvement of the target audience
The next very cool advantage is mass availability.
Returning to you with thematic contextual advertising, we immediately discover tens of thousands of sites for distributing our product.
Just imagine that the audience coverage in the Yandex advertising network is approximately 50 million people.
And many simply do not take advantage of this opportunity.
I’m generally silent about Google. This is a global search engine that has launched its tentacles into almost every area of the world Internet.
The most important thing is to set it up correctly!
Fast clients from contextual advertising
This advantage is the most significant among all entrepreneurs.
There is only one reason for this - People type in what interests them here and now!
Here's a simple example.
A man's gearbox broke down on the highway. And he urgently needs a tow truck!
Where will he go first for help?
I think in a search engine.
Obviously, this person is ready to pay right away to get help.
Accordingly, the transaction cycle is 1-3 hours (until the tow truck arrives, loads and delivers).
You can come up with as many such examples as you like!
Disadvantages of contextual advertising
This is all very cool! But few people want to talk about the disadvantages of context.
All aspiring startups get into contextual advertising, pour money into it and don’t understand why they are constantly in the red.
I want everyone who has never tried this type of advertising:
It's not cheap and doesn't always pay off
It's not suitable for everyone
You won't always be at the top of search results
Contextual advertising is not cheap
There are very few niches where they are not already placed in contextual advertising. This is logical based on this large quantity benefits.
For example, a septic tank niche (autonomous sewers for a summer residence)
This screenshot is from the Yandex Direct interface (Yandex contextual advertising).
Based on these data, the minimum cost of transition is 264 rubles (in reality it will be slightly lower).
Now let's do the math.
To receive one application from a site, on average, it takes about 30 clicks (for an average site.
30 (clicks)*264 (rubles, cost of one click) = 7920 rubles (cost of one application)
And very often, in order to make a sale, you need at least 5-6 applications from clients (on average).
Thus, the cost of one ready client who will pay money will be 47,520 rubles.
Contextual advertising is not for everyone!
Now let's imagine that your business is a grocery store. No contextual advertising will help here.
The point is that customers have an idea exactly where to buy products. They simply have no need to go to Yandex or Google to find information about prices for milk or buckwheat.
If it’s clear how to find a product without a search engine, there’s no point in getting into contextual advertising.
You won't always be at the top of search results
Now, I will refute the most popular argument of many entrepreneurs.
It is impossible to win the desired position in the search results every second, due to changes in three main indicators for all auction participants:
The CTR (click-through rate) changes every second, as the same ad may or may not be clicked on.
The conversion rate changes every second, in accordance with the change in CTR, since these 2 indicators are in the same auction formula
Quality Score is a more stable indicator and is formed from historical data on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. But it also changes over time.
Based on this, we can say for sure that with the help of contextual advertising you cannot lock down one position in the search results for the entire duration of the advertising campaign.
Many people believe that if you place the maximum bid, the position will be 100% reserved. But if, for example, an advertiser with a higher CTR and the same bid comes in, the advertiser will be forced out of the position.
I propose to dive deeper into studying the issue of how contextual advertising works.
First, I want to look at the Yandex search advertising auction.
Quality factor
Conversion rates
Advertisements from best indicator ends up in special placement (this is the name of the block immediately below the search results)
and in the block of guaranteed impressions (this is the name of the block at the bottom of the search results).
The rest of the ads can be included in dynamic impressions (on the second and subsequent pages of the search results), where the probability of display also depends on these indicators.
To calculate CTR, a forecast of the probability of clicks is used.
It's based on your keyword's historical impressions and clicks (as well as other metrics).
Quality Score is determined by: ad relevance search query, relevance of the ad to the landing page of the site, etc.
Each ad participates in them with its own bid - the maximum amount that the advertiser is willing to pay for a click.
The cost per click is greatly influenced by competition from other advertisers. The more and richer they are, the more difficult it is to advertise next to them on search engine results.
Here we are not fighting for positions in the search results. We are fighting for the number of sites on which our ad will be shown and the audience on these sites.
In a word, this is called coverage.
When displayed on networks, the audience reach depends on the cost of the click. The higher the cost per click, the more people can see your ad on Yandex partner sites.
The ads themselves look a little different. Here is an example of a YAN ad in Yandex mail.
Other rules are very important here:
Bright headline
Short and clear sentence
A beautiful picture (it’s not shown in the example, but it’s better to include it)
We write advertisements, taking into account all the capabilities of contextual advertising systems
Setting the conditions for displaying ads
Now, in order.
In order to understand which search engine is more likely to have demand, they use different types of schedulers and demand check systems.
To enter the forecaster, you need to have Yandex mail.
Calculation of advertising budget:
We enter the region in which the advertising will take place (note that it is possible to display advertising very narrowly, right down to the city).
The last step is choosing keywords for
A step-by-step algorithm for these actions can be found.
Selection of key phrases.
The most popular service for selecting keywords is https://wordstat.yandex.ru/.
This service is convenient because it allows you to understand how many times each word is entered per month.
For example:
In the left column we are shown phrases related to the request “plastic windows”, which were entered by people throughout Russia over the course of a month (the region can also be configured).
When selecting words, it is important to use (they remove unnecessary queries from the displayed list). The most popular operator is , which I advise you to immediately enter into wordstat to exclude unnecessary words.
Also in this service you can see the seasonality of demand for each key phrase.
Automation systems are also used to select words.
Such systems include KeyKolllector.
Here is the result you can get.
In the column I have highlighted, it is immediately clear how much you will need to pay for monthly continuous promotion, for individual positions in the advertising block.
Therefore, for those who want to be yours in search results, you need to pay more.
To calculate your budget for Google, you can go in 2 ways:
Reduce the amount received in Yandex by 8-10% (this is a very approximate adjustment, since on average advertising on Google is cheaper by this percentage)
Or go through the same steps but in a different planner - https://adwords.google.com/intl/ru_ru/home/tools/keyword-planner/
Unlike Yandex Planner, Google guides you step by step and you definitely won’t get confused.
Creating a contextual advertising campaign
Let's look at Yandex Direct.
At the first stage, preliminary settings are carried out:
Notifications
Special Settings
Phrases optimization
Now let's go in order.
A very important setup step. The fact is that the matter does not end with the launch of advertising. At the second stage, analysis takes place in analytical systems, and if we do not understand from which audience segment orders are coming, it will be difficult for us to manage advertising in the future.
Typically, basic advertising settings parameters are included in the campaign name, such as:
Campaign type (search or topical)
Geography of displays
Keyword segments (for example, dedicated only to a specific section of the site)
It’s also better to name campaigns in English letters.
This is necessary because in analytical systems the data is pulled from the referral tail of the link that the user clicked on. Sounds complicated!
This name will be displayed equally correctly in Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics.
Advertising schedule
We must immediately decide at what time and days we will advertise.
In the future, the settings can be adjusted very flexibly (this is one of the strongest advantages of Yandex Direct).
We can choose any day and time! But there is one thing... Displays must be allowed for at least 40 hours on weekdays.
Geotargeting
Also a very important setting. If you miss it, you can accidentally waste money on an unnecessary region.
For example, you only need the Moscow region, but in stock the settings are available throughout Russia!
It should have looked like this:
If you need to remove any individual cities, then simply uncheck them.
Also in the settings you can adjust the rate for individual cities!
Don’t check the “advanced geotargeting” box unless necessary!
Here is a short explanation of this function in Yandex Direct support (https://yandex.ru/support/direct/) - Advanced geographic targeting allows you to display ads when searching for queries that include the name of the display region, even if the user is located in a different region. For each request, Yandex search automatically determines the region of interest to the user.
Managing ad impressions
This function determines how bids will be managed in the advertising account.
First and probably most important!
Be sure to separate your campaigns into search and theme campaigns.
This is very important because these types of campaigns participate in different auctions (if mixed type, there is a mess).
In this article I will describe the basic things that must be included in Yandex Direct ads (many of them are similar to those in Google Adwords and it will be quite simple).
Here is an example of a well-written ad for the topic of plastic windows.
It takes into account the following points:
Ad group name
Announcement text
Virtual business card
Now let's look at each of the points.
Ad group name
Typically, the ad group is named based on the keywords it promotes.
IN in this example promoted keyword - plastic windows.
Ad title
One of the basic rules for writing an ad is the relevance of the title to the keyword. In other words, “Title = Keyword.”
Why is it important:
In this case, the title will be highlighted in bold
The auction entry rate will be reduced (we follow the editorial rules for writing advertisements from Yandex Direct)
The CTR will increase, because the ad will be more visible
Second headline in ad
It is better to write the second heading based on the main advantages of the product or service. The fact is that the second header will be wrapped on the line along with the first:
And we get a double effect:
The ad is more visible
The ad is more selling
Announcement text
There are several mechanics for writing ad text.
One of them is the “fat cloud”. This approach allows you to make your ads more visible by including key queries!
In my example, the first part of the text contains the word “Plastic windows”.
On delivery, keywords will be highlighted in bold.
The rest of the ad text is filled with benefits and calls to action.
Landing page
When choosing site pages, it is important to provide a relevant response to the user to the key query that he entered.
For example, if the request is “cost of installation of plastic windows,” enter home page not worth it. Most likely, a person will not find information about the cost of installation on the first screen and will leave. In this case, you need to select the appropriate page on the website dedicated to the cost of installation.
A person makes a decision whether to stay on the page or not, on the first screen.
UTM tag
The most fundamental thing that should be present in any type of online advertising. With it we can:
track the impact of specific ads
track the performance of individual images
track the performance of individual keywords
influences the cost of a keyword
keywords need to be checked in wordstat.yandex.ru so that ads for it are launched (if no one enters the keywords you came up with, it will be assigned
Negative words
The main purpose of negative keywords is to limit impressions for the selected keyword.
For example, by putting the query “plastic windows” in the list of keywords, we can appear for the query “plastic windows reviews”. If there are no reviews on the page where you want to send traffic, given word need to be sent to negative words.
There can be thousands of such words!
Yandex Metrics segments
In the first two cases, we create an audience that visited our website, but did not complete the target action (did not call, did not leave a request). Our advertisement will follow the site visitor across all YAN sites.
In the third case, we create the audience ourselves.
For example, we can select a certain point on the map and.
Using this tool is a must!
The fact is that the client makes a decision after studying 4-5 sites on the Internet. Retargeting makes it possible to remind you of yourself all the time.
The next step is to place a bid.
How to set the correct bid in contextual advertising.
In order to set a bid, ideally know all the business indicators:
website conversion
conversion of Internet traffic into sales
After this, it’s worth building a decomposition in which it’s easy to calculate what bet you need to set to start.
In the service itself
the necessary formulas are sewn up and
business stages and indicators that need to be entered are visually delineated.
As a result, you will receive your economically advantageous rate, which will give you a net profit.
But in reality we see real auction rates
and shock.
In this case, in order to be in first place in Yandex, you need to pay 1000 rubles for one click!
No economics will allow us to be in this position.
Yandex and Google check every ad and every site before they put it up in their advertising auctions.
the basic rules for posting are described in this guide - https://yandex.ru/support/direct/moderation/adv-rules.html
Payment for advertising placement
The last step is to top up your ad account budget.
It is important to understand that the replenishment amount will be divided into 2 parts:
The amount that will come to the account
VAT amount
After that, select the payment method.
Yandex Direct has 6 payment methods as an individual:
Bank card
QIWI Wallet
Cash at the bank
PayPal for individuals persons
Yandex money
U Legal entity there are only 2 ways:
Rubles from a bank account
Corporate bank card of a legal entity
How are contextual advertising campaigns carried out?
After paying for the funds and passing ad moderation, contextual advertising will begin showing.
You can view campaign statistics in performance reports (it doesn’t matter whether you use Yandex Direct or Google Adwords).
How to view statistics in Yandex Direct
In Yandex Direct this can be done in several places. The easiest way is to go to the advertising campaign level and look at the statistics.
Statistics by day
General statistics
Phrases by day
Statistics by region
Statistics by site
Statistics on search queries
Or create your own report in the Report Wizard.
Depending on the selected report, we can select different statistical columns.
How to view statistics in Google Adwords
In Google Adwords, statistics are available on the first screen of the interface
Compared to Yandex Direct, Google Adwords provides more opportunities in its statistical sections.
We can look at efficiency statistics:
CPA (may also be called CPO/CPL)
Automated
Ad groups
Depending on the report tab, the columns may be different.
Basic analysis of effectiveness in contextual advertising
Here are 4 indicators that must be taken into account when analyzing contextual advertising:
If you want explosive and beyond profitable results, I also recommend that you understand what it is:
Now let's go through each of them:
CTR
CTR = number of clicks/number of impressions*100%
This indicator determines how attractive your ad is written. If the CTR is low, it means the audience is not interested in the offer.
Add all extensions to the ad so that it takes up more space in the ad unit (clarifications, quick links, etc.)
Change the offer to a more profitable one
Rephrase the ad to make the offer look better than competitors
The system must take into account the basic rule - the proposal must be interesting to users. Otherwise, the search engine will no longer be trusted and used.
The lower the CPA, the less money we need to spend for the same number of applications/calls from clients.
The ability to work with a CPA gives you access to this opportunity.
To learn how to manage this indicator, you need to ideally understand how it is influenced
How does CPC affect CPA?
If the site conversion does not change, then by lowering the cost of transition we will reduce the advertising budget and lower the CPA
How does CR affect CPA?
Website conversion is one of the most important indicators when managing CPA.
Increasing website conversion by at least half a percent results in a significant reduction in the cost of targeted actions on the website!
How to lower CPA:
Change the offer on the site
Lower CPC
Improve website usability
Rewrite the ad so that it fully corresponds to the content of the site
Add more capture forms to the site
Place a call back on the website
Make dynamic content on the site
Professional analysis of indicators in contextual advertising
If you really want to become a guru in contextual advertising, then you need to go deeper into the sales funnel.
That is why I will tell you a few more indicators.
Requirements for analysis:
DRR (Share of advertising expenses)
When working with this indicator, you should take into account the average bill of services sold, and strive to redistribute the advertising budget towards expensive goods.
ROMI (Return on Investment on Marketing Expenditures)
Calculating return on investment is most often used by professional financiers.
But in large campaigns you can’t do without it.
To calculate this indicator, you must have end-to-end analytics configured on your website.
Contextual advertising optimization
Having studied all previous indicators, we can begin to optimize contextual advertising costs.
There are 2 optimization methods:
Manual optimization of contextual advertising
Manual optimization relies heavily on knowledge of Excel basics.
Tables are our everything!
Before starting work you need to check:
Let's look at the easiest way to optimize Yandex Direct.
If all the goals in the metric are configured correctly and you have done everything according to these instructions, then the following will appear in Yandex Direct reports:
Conversions (this is the number of targeted actions on the site that were completed)
Target price, rub. (this is a CPA)
If the target price for a certain advertising segment (keyword, ad, etc.) is too high, then we dig deeper to understand the reason.
Here is an example of a campaign in YAN.
Let's get into the site report and see this picture.
Obviously, the e.mail.ru site brought only one conversion for 1,900 rubles. Compared to other sites, it is very expensive.
The situation at the mail.yandex.ru site is even more deplorable. There, for 1,500 rubles we got nothing at all.
Such sites can be excluded when displaying advertising in the advertising campaign settings.
In Google Adwords everything is just as simple.
A remarketing campaign was launched and it is obvious that it is not entirely successful and it is better to stop it.
Automation of contextual advertising
Automation of any processes in business makes life much easier. It’s the same story with contextual advertising.
If we consider automatic adjustments in contextual advertising, you can go in 3 ways:
Use your own management developments
Use ready-made solutions to automate other campaigns
Automation inside Yandex Direct
There are automatic strategies that remove the advertiser from the process of managing advertising campaigns:
average cost per click (fixes the cost per click due to automatic adjustments)
average conversion cost (keeps CPA within certain intervals)
Average ROI (manages ROMI from advertising)
weekly click package (redistributes budgets to get required quantity clicks under given budget conditions)
Unfortunately, the automation proposed in the Yandex Direct interface is not very popular due to its low efficiency. But overall, the tools are working in the right hands.
Automation also includes adjustments to bids at all levels (gender, age, time, etc.).
Automation in Google Adwords
Everything is much more fun in Adwords:
there are automatic rules
automatic strategies
rate adjustments
creating your own control scripts
I won’t go deep, but I’ll tell you about each in a few words.
Automatic rules in Google Adwords
They are configured in the interface in the “Automation” tab.
You can configure your own rules on different report tabs.
The main advantage is that by setting up a rule, the system will perform the task of adjusting advertising campaigns at the right time.
The main disadvantage is that these operations will not be performed more than once an hour and for one action you need to make a separate rule (if you want adjustments every hour, make 24 rules).
Automatic strategies in Google Adwords
These strategies are very similar to Yandex Direct strategies, but more effective (perhaps because Adwords has been around longer and is more mature).
These include:
CPA optimizer (if there is a high chance of getting a conversion, the bid increases to 30%)
Target position on search page
Target winning percentage (strategy aimed at competing with certain domains in search results)
Maximum number of clicks
Third-party contextual advertising automation services.
Such services include:
Typically, automation in these systems is based on bid adjustments relative to advertising performance indicators.
Eg:
You have a high CPO. The system will analyze keywords and campaigns and turn off unprofitable ones automatically.
Also, such services allow you to generate a huge number of ads in a couple of seconds. Such services are called generators.
How to find good specialist on contextual advertising.
And now we come to the most important thing.
If you are an entrepreneur, you hardly have time to do everything that I described in the article with your own hands.
I wrote this article specifically so that you can use it as a checklist for checking any “Directologist”.
Here are a few questions I would ask a specialist to understand his level.
Can he work with Google Adwords?
What contextual advertising automation systems did he work with?
Does he know how to work with (even if you don’t have them)
Can he import expense data into Yandex Metrica or Google Analytics?
Will he be able to provide daily performance reports up to the CPA level (at least)
Can he set up dynamic remarketing in Google Analytics or smart banners in Yandex Direct?
Can it work with Google Tag Manager?
Let him tell you how he will calculate the cost of the bid for advertising campaigns
Or ask any question based on my article (he should definitely know everything that is written here).
If he has reasoned answers to all this (or better yet), then it’s worth starting to work with this specialist!
I hope my article was useful to you. Save it as a reminder and try contextual advertising if you haven’t already!