Contextual advertising is a type of online advertising that targets users based on the content they are currently viewing or searching for. It uses algorithms to analyze the context of a webpage and displays relevant ads to the user.
This type of advertising is highly effective as it reaches users who are already interested in the product or service being advertised.
Why is contextual advertising needed?
Contextual advertising is one of the most convenient promotion tools that helps attract targeted traffic and increase sales. This tool only works if you set it up correctly before launching ads, regularly monitor performance and make timely changes to the campaign. If you don’t, the tool will not bring results, and the advertising budget will be wasted.
It is important to keep abreast in contextual advertising. The general mechanism of the tool remains the same, but there are many changes around. Here are just some of them:
- Ad system requirements are changing: updates are being released and new tools are being developed to make ad settings more flexible
- Advertising systems change their own algorithms periodically
- New competitors appear in the fight for traffic, and old competitors launch new campaigns based on the analysis of your ad launches. The purpose of such campaigns is to be ahead of you
If you do not take into account these changes and do not update the contextual advertising settings, you can quickly reduce its effectiveness.
Who carries contextual advertising
The specialist is called a PPC specialist or contextologist. The specialist launches and sets up ads, and also makes sure that the campaign brings results and reaches certain indicators. It could be:
- Freelancer is the cheapest option. It is important to look for a freelancer with testimonials and successful cases. Such a specialist will help you get the most out of contextual advertising.
- PPC specialist from the agency – setting up contextual advertising can be one of the services that an advertising agency provides. Often it takes care of all the scope of work of launching ads – from developing creatives to choosing traffic channels. This is the most expensive option, but in this case you pay for high expertise – agencies always have large portfolios with successful cases.
- Inviting a PPC specialist to the company team is another expensive way. Not all business owners will be able to take this step.
What does a PPC specialist do:
- studies the company and the product to be promoted;
- determines traffic channels and landing pages for advertising;
- collects the semantic core and uses negative keywords;
- sets up advertising campaigns;
- evaluates the effectiveness of campaigns;
- optimizes ads – looks for ways to cut costs and increase performance.
Who needs contextual advertising
Business owners who have online sales and an advertising budget to run contextual campaigns. Running an Advertising campaign helps to consistently receive requests and sales from advertising and spend money effectively.
Life hacks for contextual advertising
- Run ads on those who have already been your customer
The idea is to increase repeat sales – to attract users who have already made purchases from your company and are familiar with your product. In order to return such users, we collect a segment of users who have already bought on the site. We run ads to this segment based on the key queries of competitors, and even if the user is looking for products and offers of competitors, he will see the ad and can return to the site because he is already familiar with the product.
- Increase CTR by increasing the number of ad units.
We take the semantics from the current search campaign, use it to launch banners on the search. Bottom line – in the search results, the user is shown not only a text ad, but also a banner. This will help make your ads more visible and increase your CTR.
- Limit impressions by time
You can limit impressions during unnecessary hours with a lower bid. So ads will lose to competitors and will not be shown when, for example, your audience is definitely inactive.
- Run campaigns separately by regions
Different regions have different CPCs. In the capital, they are usually higher than in small towns. If you do not split the campaign, you will have to pay for all advertising at one price – the highest one. Otherwise, advertising in large cities will be ineffective, and in small regions you will receive requests and sales. In order not to overpay for traffic from the regions, set precise targeting by city before launching ads.
- Do not track clicks, track CPL and conversion
Getting to the first position in search results is not the key goal of the ads launch. Advertising is expected to bring customers and increase sales. The first line in the search does not guarantee the growth of applications, it can be only large spending on advertising. You can get a lot of clicks and increase your reach, but there will be few requests, and the cost per lead (CPL) is gigantic.
The solution is to focus on the number of requests coming from advertising and the price of each request. It is not so important how many people watched your ad and clicked on the link, more important is to get a target action from the user (send a request, download an application, place an order). If we are not chasing clicks, so we don’t need a pay-per-click model. Ad clicks are very expensive. It is better to choose a cost per lead model – in this case, you pay only for those who completed the target action.
- Filter out inappropriate traffic with negative keywords
Negative keywords help to ensure that users who are not interested in our product and offers were not directed to the site. Firstly, you will have to pay for inappropriate traffic and waste the advertising budget, secondly when the user quickly closes the website page, the search engine considers that the site is not interesting to users, and may lower it in the search results.
Ways to save on contextual advertising
- Use operators
Operators help to clarify the request. For example, the “+” operator helps to fix words in a query. Usually they are used to fix prepositions – “scooter + for children”, “constructor + for rent”. And with the help of the “—” operator, it is convenient to remove unnecessary phrases from the semantic core that can lead to inappropriate traffic – for example, “—children’s excavator” for a company that sells excavators for construction.
- Improve ad quality
The position of an advertisement in SERP is affected not only by the auction bid, but also by the quality of the advertisement itself. High-quality advertising brings more traffic and converts clicks into leads more efficiently. To improve the quality of your ad, you need to:
- use all fields in the ad – titles, links, descriptions, etc.;
- use extensions and quick links;
- add keywords to titles and text of ads;
- add useful information to ads (delivery terms, phone number, address, discount amount, etc.;
- use the correct links and make sure that the ad leads to the right landing pages.
- Test ad variations
Having one creative and using it during an advertising campaign is not always effective. If the correct settings are done but you notice a low CTR, the ad has to be quickly revised. It’s easier to prepare several add variants in advance and test them in order to find the most converting one and launch it for the entire audience
To summarize the topic, it should be noted:
- Contextual advertising does not work by itself. If you run a campaign and do not monitor it, the effect of advertising will be minimal, but the budget will be large.
- A PPC specialist is responsible for maintaining contextual advertising, for setting up ad launch, monitoring ad performance, and offering campaign optimization solutions to reduce costs and improve target metrics.
- In order to successfully launch contextual advertising, it is necessary to correctly set the campaign settings at the start and periodically analyze advertising indicators.
