Having done just about all I could do to optimize my blog for banner advertising, I’m now setting my sights on contextual ad links. There are a few networks out there for this type of advertising, but Kontera is one of the larger ones that’s been around a few years, so I signed up for them the other day.
You’ve probably seen these links before, as they are usually depicted by a double lined link, which pops up a small ad window when you hover your cursor over it. Since I don’t use any underlines for links on my blog, the ad links here are denoted by one line instead. That should help reduce the link clutter while still keeping the ads distinguished enough from normal links. So far, it looks and loads pretty decently on my site, so I’m happy.
I may continue to shop around for an alternative network though (such as Infolinks), since Kontera has a few caveats that annoy me. For one, if you want to block certain keywords from converting into ad links, you have to email them. If you want to block certain advertisers too, you have to email them. If you want to limit the number of ad links that show up on a page, yep, you have to email them. In addition, the ad links don’t always spread out evenly enough on a page, so one post might theoretically contain only one link, while another post contains over 20. Three years they’ve been around you’d think they’d improve on this by now, but oh well. If they pay me well enough I won’t complain, especially if I see ads like this:
Heh. :-D
That’s probably due to my blog not being completely analyzed yet for optimization, but still, that was funniest thing I’ve seen all day.
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That was hilarious. I wonder if you can buy the old woman with her shoe and all her children.
I could probably get a group discount that way.
I will have you know that I am not for sale!!!!
This comment fell into the wrong place.
@ConsrvYank: No surprise there, since we’re only dealing with old women, not young.
Hi Lincoln,
My name is Vered and I’m from Kontera.
I have to agree that this is a strange ad :)…and thanks for noting that your blog is yet to be fully optimized.
It’s true that at the moment some ContentLink customization options require emailing Kontera. However our publishers have many customization options they can employ by using either the kontera plug-ins or our other optimization techniques (to find out more please visit the Kontera knowledgebase at http://kb.kontera.com/).
The number of ContentLink ads per page depends mainly on the page’s content (mainly its length, topic and Keywords) and the publisher’s requests. Not every post includes information which advertisers seek.
I hope this helps clarify things and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any Kontera related question you may have.
Regards,
Vered
Publisher Services Manager
Kontera.com