In this article, we will tell you what contextual advertising is and what types there are. We will figure out what business tasks it can solve, how to set it up and how much it costs to place contextual advertising on the Internet.
What is contextual advertising?
Types of contextual advertising: in search and on partner sites
What business tasks does contextual advertising solve?
The essence and indicators of contextual advertising
Keyword and negative keywords
How to set up contextual advertising: the main stages from the task to reports
How much does contextual advertising cost: from 300 rubles per day
What is contextual advertising?
Table of Contents
Contextual advertising is advertising that all Internet users have encountered when searching for something in a search engine. It is called contextual because it takes into account the context: what words the user uses to formulate a request, what he is interested in, where he is.
For example, a person wants to order a pizza, goes to Yandex and writes “order pizza Kazan”. The search engine understands his request and shows the sites of pizzerias in Kazan. And among such sites there will be advertising – it is called contextual.
This is how search contextual advertising works from the user’s side. But from the business’s side, for example, the same pizzerias, everything happens differently: the pizzeria chooses words and phrases by which it wants to show its site in search results. These can be general phrases, for example, “pizzeria Kazan”, or more precise ones – “order pizza with pineapples in the Kirov district of Kazan”. And then the company pays every time the user clicks on the pizzeria’s ad in the search.
But contextual advertising is not only found in search engines – there are other types.
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Types of contextual advertising: in search and on partner sites
Contextual advertising is shown not only at the moment when the user is searching for something, but also some time after the search. For example, a person was once interested in systems and grants for business – he was looking for something like that in a search engine. And then he goes to his mail and sees advertising on these topics:
Contextual advertising can be divided into two types according to placement platforms:
search engines – usually Yandex and Google;
search networks – sites that allow you to place ads, for example, they allocate a piece of the site for it. We see such ads when we go to a site – usually they are placed on the side, at the bottom, and sometimes at the top.
On search network sites, contextual advertising can be like this:
What business tasks does contextual advertising solve?
Contextual advertising in business solves sales issues. It is followed by companies that sell something: flowers, cars, food, clothes, apartments. The main thing for contextual advertising in search engines is that demand for the advertised product or service is formed. Compare two situations:
In the first situation, contextual advertising is ideal – a maximally clear request, a formed need: a person urgently needs a tow truck and is ready to pay for it right now.
In the second case, when a person does not know what he wants, search contextual advertising will not be as effective: there is no specific request, which means there is no context and it is difficult to determine what exactly to show the user. Of course, you can use contextual advertising in the search to offer a person your own option – to go to a spa or an exhibition. Advertising will also work, but not as effectively as with an already formulated request.
Therefore, companies mainly use contextual advertising to attract people with a formed need – those who already know what they want to buy or order.
From here follow the advantages and disadvantages of contextual advertising:
The essence and indicators of contextual advertising
The goal of contextual advertising is sales, applications, and user requests. When a pizzeria places such advertising, it wants the user to go to its site and order a pizza. It is important that the price of the advertising is lower than the costs of placing the advertising, preparing and delivering the pizza.
Advertising is aimed at sales, so it is important to track the main indicators of contextual advertising:
budget – how much money the company spends on advertising;
impressions – how many people saw an advertisement on the Internet;
clicks – how many times the ad was clicked;
CTR – click-through rate of an ad – what percentage of those who saw the ad clicked on it;
CPC — cost per click on an advertisement;
conversions — the percentage of transitions from one action to the next. For example, the conversion percentage shows how many people who clicked on an ad then went to the basket. Then another conversion shows how many of them paid for the order.
All of these metrics relate specifically to advertising, but there are two more important business metrics:
ROMI — how much you managed to earn over and above your advertising costs, that is, how much percent each invested ruble paid off. For example, if you invested 1,000 rubles in advertising and earned 1,500 rubles, then ROMI is 500 rubles;
DRR (advertising expenditure share) — like ROMI, but in reverse. Shows how much money was spent to attract one ruble from advertising. For example, if you earned 1,500 rubles and spent 1,000 rubles on advertising, then DRR is 30%.
In fact, there are many more indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising, and they need to be selected for your situation. And to calculate the two largest metrics – DRR and ROMI – you also need to know the average check and the monthly sales amount in the company.
Some of these indicators are calculated in the advertising account before the launch of advertising. And some – only after. But, in order to launch contextual advertising on the Internet, you first need to understand the keywords for the ads.
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Keyword and negative keywords
Keywords are the words that will trigger ads in search engines and on sites. And there are three schemes here.
Search keywords
 the user types in the search query “buy winter shoes”, and at that moment he is shown an advertisement for winter shoes.
Keywords on websites
the user visited websites that contain keywords, for example, an online shoe store or the website of the Mir Cherevichek factory, and then he is shown shoe ads on partner network websites with the same keywords.
Algorithm memoryÂ
the user once searched for winter shoes, and now he is shown an advertisement for such shoes – on any sites that are connected to the affiliate network.
At the same time, the advertiser can narrow the category of people using negative words and selecting a region:
minus words are words for which ads will not be shown. For example, an online store sells skis of all brands except “Pobeda Proletariata“. If you add “pobeda” and “proletariat” to the minus words, then ads will not be shown for the request “buy Pobeda Proletariata skis”;
region selection — the advertiser can select the region in which the ad will be shown. For example, a ski shop selects Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Chelyabinsk, but not Sochi, Krasnodar, and Anapa.
All these settings help make contextual advertising on the Internet more effective: show it to those who are more likely to make a purchase or application.
How to set up contextual advertising: the main stages from the task to reports
It seems that with contextual advertising everything is simple: choose the words, write the ads – and go. But business needs sales, not just advertising. So in reality everything is a little more complicated.
All contextual advertising on websites or in search is configured through two accounts: Yandex.Direct and Google Ads. The algorithms for launching advertising are similar, so we will understand using the example of Yandex.Direct.
Step 1. Understand the task. At this stage
 the contextualist — a specialist who sets up contextual advertising — grounds the business tasks in numbers. For example, the client says that he wants to earn 100,000 rubles on advertising, and the contextualist calculates what budget is needed and how much one click should cost. For this, you need to have a good understanding of contextual advertising indicators.
Step 2. Conduct research into the client’s business and audience
 To launch good advertising, a contextual specialist understands the strengths and weaknesses of the business. For example, a dentistry clinic has excellent doctors, but does not have its own dental technician, so it has to order expensive implants. Doctors are a competitive advantage for the clinic, but implants are not. This will need to be taken into account in the advertising ads.
Step 3. Define decision-making criteria for each segment
Some clients value a low price for a product or service, others value quality, and others value speed. Some will look for a dentist near their home, while others will look for reviews of doctors. In order not to offer the audience everything at once, it is divided into segments — parts united by some common criterion.
For example, an online school advertises a course on design. Here are the following user queries for setting up the context:
how to become a designer;
design course;
design course from Alla Aloy.
All three queries are suitable for us, but they are from different segments. Users in the first segment just want to learn design, in the second they want a course but don’t know which one, in the third they want a specific course from a competitor. Therefore, advertising for each segment will be different.
Step 4. For each segment, select a list of keywords and negative words
Once the segments are defined, you can search for words that will trigger contextual advertising and, conversely, will not. Each segment has its own set of keywords. It is convenient to collect them in the Wordstat service – it has statistics on search queries. You can find out what users searched for and how many times a month.
Step 5. Create advertisements
 Most often, this is text, but there can be pictures or videos. They can have different formats and messages. A separate creative is created for each segment so that the advertising offer is specific and catchy. Sometimes a designer and copywriter help the contextualist with the preparation of creatives.
And here it is important to write such ads to attract only the right audience. For example, a person is looking for a reliable dentist to get a tooth inserted. The Omega dental clinic has great doctors with a lot of experience, but the queue to see them is a month in advance. Therefore, it makes sense to emphasize the professionalism of the doctors in the ads – their experience, qualifications and level of education: this will be included in the user’s queries.
Some other clinic will write in the ad “Appointment on the day of the appointment” because there are people who need a dentist right now because of a toothache. This is a different audience with a different request, and it is right to make a different ad for them.
Step 6. Check the landing page
Even if the ad is set up well, it may not produce results. Often the reason for failure lies in the landing page, that is, where a person ends up after clicking on the ad. There are three most common problems with landing pages:
The user does not understand where he ended up. This happens if the ad has one content, and the page has something completely different. Or the page does not explain anything: there is text, but it is about nothing, although it should tell about the product or service that was advertised.
Objections have not been processed, that is, it is not clear how much and what costs, whether there is delivery, a guarantee, or a return.
It is unclear what to do next. Here the user has reached the landing page. What next? Where is the phone number? Where is the application form? Or should I still write to the email?
A good specialist always checks landing pages, because the effectiveness of contextual advertising depends on their quality.
Step 7. Set up campaigns in the advertising account
A list of keywords and stop words is loaded into the advertising account, targeting is set – geo, display time, advertising placement sites and much more. In the advertising account, the contextual specialist also works with the budget, strategies and rates, that is, determines how much one target action will cost at most and how much money can be spent in total.
Step 8. Collect reports, conduct analytics and optimize advertising.
When all the reports are collected (for example, from Yandex.Metrica ), it may turn out that some ads worked better than others: they were clicked on more often, and after the transition, they were purchased more often, and the advertising with them was cheaper. This means that more money can be directed to these ads, that is, the budget can be redistributed. The same can happen with audiences: users from a more suitable audience will respond better to advertising.
Sometimes you have to refine the landing page, and to do this, you have to communicate with call center operators and sales managers. This is a lot of work, but after it, it becomes clear how to work with advertising further.
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How much does contextual advertising cost: from 300 rubles per day
Contextual advertising works on the auction principle, so the price of advertising depends on the number of advertisers. The more companies want to show their advertising, the greater the competition for each advertising block. And the more expensive each click.
The placement of an ad in search results is determined by its price and quality.
Price, or bid
 If an advertiser is willing to pay 10 rubles for a click on their ad, rather than 5 like the others, this ad will be higher.
Quality
 High-quality ads will get clicks more often, regardless of where they appear in the search results or what position they take up on the page.
It is advantageous for systems to give more clicks to those ads that better solve the user’s query. After all, such ads are clicked more often, which means that they trust the ads and the search network more. Accordingly, high-quality ads have priority.
The higher the quality of the ad, the lower the price you have to pay to get it to the top of the search results. And the higher the ad is, the more people will see it and click on it. Contextual advertising also has a lower cost threshold. In Yandex.Direct, it is 300 rubles per day.
