ADOTAS – October 27 is the birthday of the banner ad. Hotwired.com was the first company to run these ads in 1994, the beginning of what would become a $24 billion business. These simple ads for AT&T and Volvo somehow generated a CTR of 78% – the latter’s banner didn’t even send the consumer to the car company’s website but rather to a questionnaire asking what type of automobile the consumer was interested in.
It’s been 17 years and online advertising has grown tremendously; however the average CTR of banner ads today is only a fraction of a percent: a measly 0.1%. So how does one generate ad revenue in a world where online consumers have adapted to ignore banner advertising?
We must ask why the CTR of banner ads drop so much. This has a two part answer; banner ads are ignored, consciously and subconsciously, and when they aren’t, they don’t convert a high rate because the ads are not delivered at a relevant time. The solution to these issues is to reach online consumers when they want it and where their attention is. In-content advertising allows advertisers to reach this goal.
In-content advertising is much like the placement of products that you often see in movies and television. This advertising technique is contextually relevant and tightly integrated. It works for two reasons: consumers see and interact with these advertisements and they experience the advertisements when they’re actually looking for the information.
The easiest way to reach your viewer is with in-content advertising with link insertion. Link insertion allows users to scroll the mouse over a word that then pulls up a pop-up to link to the relevant site.
Kontera Technologies is one of the leaders in this technology field with a decade of research and development. Their technology is able to predict intent by understanding the meaning of the pages and how users interact with the site content. INTENTclick, part of Kontera and a company I work with, utilizes this technology while focusing on businesses and websites that have SEO driven making money or saving money content focused around purchase intent
You can read more about in-content advertising and link insertion in the eBook that
I recently wrote,”Content Monetization.” Also, please see “INTENETclick”: In-Text Advertising Secrets,” another eBook I recently wrote that dives into the new in-text advertising method using the popular company that I think works best, INTENTclick.