Compass Designs .net

Or....

"hey, what's up with all the ads!"

You may have noticed I have some Google Awords and Kontera contextual ads on the site now. I am running a little test about what CPM is achievable with the two different kinds of ads.

You are probably familier with Google Adsense on a Joomla site. There are a few sites that really overdo it (no names!) and you can hardly see any any content. Sometimes the adverts (along with some RSS) are the content. I really dislike those sites!

Anyway, I have never really used ads on this site. It is here as a service rather than to generate ad revenue. But I came across a new type of advertising and I thought I would run a test for the benefit of you my readers...

Google Adwords on a Joomla Website

Its easy to , all you need to do is head over and open an account. You then need to create a module and paste your adsense code into it. Adsense dynamically analyzes your page and places relavent ads in the box. When people click on them, you get a few cents.

Of course, like many things, Adsense is like chess. Easy to pick up and had to master. There are so many factors involved to get the maximum click through rate.

You need to have high quality page copy, both to draw the traffic and to help Google find the most relevant ads.

You need to place the ads in a place that people will click on. For example ads at the very top of the page are not useful as viewers have become "banner blind" and treat anything in that location as a ad and ignore it.

Contextual Advertising

I am also using something called contextual advertising. Its a relatively new development. It works more or less like Adsense. Keywords are analyzed and then ads are chosen from the databank. In this case though, the ads appear as links IN the page copy rather than on a list to the side. Supposedly this is supposed to increase the click-through rate (CTR), or annoyance, depending on your point of view!

I am testing Kontera. The blurb from their site states:

ContentLink™s are contextually relevant keywords discovered in real time on a publisherÂ’s web page that are automatically turned into a link to the most relevant and highest paying text ad from one of KonteraÂ’s thousands of advertisers. 

Sounds good eh?

This advertising is a little harder to set up. You need some js placed in a module and then you might also need to insert a <div

Stay tuned and in a couple of weeks I'll post some of my findings. In the mean time, feel free to post your thoughts on monetizing your site.