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Contextual Ad Networks...The Baby Boom Is Upon Us
by: Kirk Bannerman
No, this baby boom will certainly not swamp the Social Security system (sort of a bad joke for those that live in the United States, but many other countries...most notably Japan...have an even more acute problem), but this baby boom is revolutionizing the way that pay per click advertising is being spread across the Internet. One of the early participants in this pay per click baby boom was Google, with its AdSense program. With this program, Google shares pay per click revenue with a huge number of individual partner websites that carry a few pay per click ads that are distributed by Google. In essence, this creates a whole bunch of little pay per click locations (websites) throughout the Internet and hence the term "pay per click baby boom". Conceptually, programs like AdSense are similar to what the computer hardware folks refer to a distributed processing. Instead of trying to draw everyone to a large pay per click search engine site, little groups of pay per click ads are spread widely across thousands of locations (websites) all over the Internet. Actually, this distributed processing or propagation technique is not limited to pay per click advertising. For example, Amazon uses a similar arrangement (called Amazon Associates) to sell the products it carries on amazon.com and ClickBank has a sales program called CBAdwords which operates in a similar fashion. According my trusty Ouija board, it seems likely that most commercial hubs on the Internet will be shifting to this propagation concept as time progresses...all of those individual partner websites that carry the message/proposition will constitute the vast army of worker ants that keep the queen ant alive and healthy. From a pay per click marketing perspective, these programs make brilliant use of leverage while providing highly targeted prospects for the paying advertiser. There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call the "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue! Aren't these fun times that we're living in? As these programs continue to proliferate, the individual webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid the temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used, these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you are providing to enhance the information and opportunities that you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a little pay per click money. If properly used, these propagation programs can result in the classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster) and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing the ads. As in many things, moderation is important. The dynamic search engine marketing industry continues to evolve as users began to take advantage of the steady stream of new features, tools and innovations provided by the ever increasing number of search engines offering quality search results (it's not all about Google anymore). The evolutionary time line for Internet marketing continues to run at warp speed. An example of previous evolutionary periods (which by now may almost seem prehistoric) would be the emergence of pay-per-click advertising and the cooresponding rise of search-marketing firms specializing in AdWords and Overture. As long as there are methods for finding and retrieving information in digital databases by using keywords or similar attributes, there will be a search-marketing industry. How that industry operates in the future depends on how the search engines operate and how consumer tendencies evolve. It's a constant sea of change, but the good things just keep on getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and the opportunities will just keep on coming your way. The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery", but I don't think I'm far off the mark about where things are heading. With that, I'm off the soapbox and wishing you success in whatever you do online! About the author: Kirk Bannerman operates his own successful home based business and also coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. For more information visit his website at http://www.home-based-business-team.com Circulated by Article Emporium

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