Advantages of contextual advertising

There are several explanations for the popularity of contextual advertising. Among them, three main ones can be distinguished. The first is its relevance to the user's topical queries. The idea is really very good: to show the user ads on a topic that matches the subject of the pages they are viewing. This increases the likelihood that they will be interested in clicking the link to the advertised resource. The idea of creating contextual advertising originated in the depths of search engines so they could earn deserved revenue from free search.

And for this, the best approach was to add advertising blocks to the obtained results that match the topic of the user's query. The next step was the creation of systems that analyzed the visited page and served ads based on that analysis. Today both systems are used equally actively; the same system can use both methods of contextual advertising.

Several varieties have also appeared, such as banners, highlighting certain words in articles, and others.

The second reason contextual advertising is so popular is the measurable results of advertising campaigns. Perhaps these results are not as spectacular as the ad services themselves claim, but they do exist.

Moreover, continual improvements have greatly enhanced the performance of ad services, allowing fairly precise specification of the parameters under which an ad will be shown. These parameters include the keywords themselves, as well as time of day, the user's region, etc. In addition, promoting websites through advertising is a legitimate method, unlike manipulating search queries or sending spam.

The third factor that makes contextual advertising so popular is its low cost. Offline advertising is expensive: to launch an advertising campaign you need a lot of time, money, and effort. Offline advertising is impossible without specialists. Contextual advertising, on the other hand, can cost only $50–100 for a trial run, after which you decide how to proceed. The effort required to create a contextual ad is negligible compared to preparing offline advertising: you need to decide on keywords, craft a slogan, and place a link to the advertised resource. In some cases it even makes more sense: for example, promoting an online store's website should be done using contextual advertising methods rather than offline advertising.