Language advances at the rate of technology, and that means f-a-s-t.  Anyone making a living online knows how crucial it is to keep up with the new terms and phrases that amass in the industry.

A few months ago we published a post containing glossary terms and metrics relevant to the online advertising industry in general and more specifically to Kontera.  We’ve received some warm responses for this post and so we’ve decided to expand, introducing additional terms to the list:

Campaign Related

Cost Per Click- The amount paid by an advertiser per each click on their ad.

Campaign Targeting- Gearing an advertising campaign to a particular demographic.

ROI – an acronym for Return on Investment.  In other words, the percentage of profit that an advertiser accrues from a marketing or advertising campaign

Technology Related

Semantic Analysis- Semantic analysis involves text mining, term/phrase extraction, page vector analysis, associations and and other parameters. Semantic analysis is used to determine the context of the page and respond with relevant advertising or related content.

Contextual Relevance- in the field of In-Text contextual advertising, this term refers to the strength of the connection between an underlined keyword and the advertisement paired with it.

Computational Linguistics- a field dealing with the statistical and/or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective.  Kontera’s contextual analysis technology is based on the principles of computational linguistics.

Industry Related

Interactive Advertising- the type of advertising that allows active participation from the user.  See Kontera’s interactive advertising.

Rich Media Ads- a term for advanced technology used in internet ads, such as streaming video, applets that allow user interaction, and special effects.

IAB- The Interactive Advertising Bureau. The IAB is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising.

References:

We put this list together using the following great resources:

Wikipedia

Yahoo Publisher Network Blog

IAB website

There’s a simple way to explain everything, even elaborate algorithms and systems…

Today we wanted to show a simple outline of user interaction with our ContentLink ads.  If you are entirely new to Kontera, we hope you will find this explanation especially helpful.

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For those of you interested in learning about the principals behind our contextual analysis technology, visit our Contextual Advetising Technology page.

When undertaking an online advertising campaign, advertisers strive to engage users. Campaign goals vary from increasing brand awareness to introducing a product’s advantages while encouraging users to try it out. Meeting these goals in the highly competitive and fast paced online marketing sphere is a challenging task. Campaigns these days have to engage users by delivering the advertiser’s messaging in an innovative and compelling way.

Kontera’s In-text advertising is an ideal medium through which to meet this challenge.  ContentLink ads are placed where users’ attention is focused, within the text, while Kontera’s advanced technology, ensures maximum relevancy between the ads and the content in which they’re featured. ContentLink is a rich advertising tool which simultaneously provides added user-value and a particularly well targeted advertising campaign.

Below is an example of a rich media campaign recently launched:

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With advanced contextual advertising technology and a variety of original and engaging ad formats Kontera’s ContentLink can assist every advertiser in meeting their branding and conversion goals with a user initiated advertising unit.

Read more about “Looking Outside the (Search) Box” in online advertising.

Within the constantly evolving online world, some norms are re-examined every time a new technology, beyond a certain size and scope of influence, is introduced. In other words, most new technologies undergo some period of “evaluation” by users, upon first emerging into the market; a period which could last from months to years.  If you recall the discussion around RSS earlier in the decade, quite a few site owners and bloggers at the time were concerned with their content being republished and read elsewhere, while their site does not gain the visits for the content.  It took some time before web publishers fully accepted the outweighing benefits of RSS, one being the fact that it enables a greater reach and thus a greater readership for their content.  The benefits that RSS afforded to users, proved to be an advantage to publishers as well.

Something similar has happened with In-Text Advertising. In-Text became widespread as its benefits became well known.  If we look back to earlier in the decade, In-Text Advertising was causing some controversy as some prominent websites, began to display ads and information, within their content.  As quoted on iMedia, “The problem that caused the controversy in In-Text Advertising had more to do with the medium in which it appeared than with the message.”  It was not so much an issue with the advertisement as with the new medium through which they were served.  In the case of Kontera’s In-Text, the benefits to advertisers and to publishers are well known. But as Kontera’s philosophy is three fold, we wanted to highlight the main benefit In-Text hold for users. Indeed, in the last few years, Kontera’s contextual advertising technology has proved its advantages to users by offering a distinct added value- access to highly relevant ads and information that is in sync with the most current interest and state of mind of the reader.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of In-Text lies in the fact that it suits today’s dynamic online mode of work. We are already a different type of online user than we were even 5 years ago.   We refer to the contemporary multi-tasking user.  We know all about the- multi tabbing, multi window, updating my Facebook while completing chart on excel- mode of work.  Considering this, it’s really not surprising that In-Text has earned its popularity over the past few years.  With the possibility of being in more than one place at a time, finding access to extended information while being engaged with content, Kontera’s In Text brings an added value to today’s online user.

By Mika Tal

Information- the more we have of it, the better? Sure, so long as we know how to use it.

This is the simple conclusion I came to in one of my ventures through Google Analytics.  With so much information around to explore, one has to know how to ask a question accurately.  Needless to say, narrowing down the mounds of information to a set of central parameters is an important step in learning how to utilize such an advanced tool to one’s benefit.

Today I’d like to suggest a few Google Analytics parameters that can aid you in optimizing the performance of your Kontera pay-per-click ads .  If you’re new to Google analytics, you may find this information especially useful. I’ve narrowed it down to 4:

• New vs. Returning visits- Returning visitors tend to generate a higher CTR for ContentLink® ads.  The reason for this is that visitors who return to your site are already familiar with the information you serve, and with the advantages of Kontera ads.  They are more trusting of ContentLinks and they tend to click the ads more often. For advice on how to get more of your site’s visitors to become returning visitors, consult this great post on entrepreneurs-journey.com

To find out your site’s ratio for New/ Returning Visitors- on your Analytics account, go to Visitors and then click New vs. Returning.

• Top Content Pages – To get the best results, it is recommended that you place your ContentLink tag on all your website’s pages.  However, if you choose to place ContentLinks on a few pages rather than all, make sure the pages you choose are ones that generate traffic.  I’m sure there’s no need to explain why traffic is important for making the most out of your ContentLink ads.

To find Top Content Pages on your Analytics account, go to Content then click Top Content.

• Top Search Engine Keywords- we have published a series of posts on how to maximize your ad earnings by optimizing your site’s content. Knowing which keywords bring the most search engine traffic to your site is important because these are likely to be the more popular keywords, often sought after by advertisers.  These keywords have better monetary potential.

Go to Traffic Sources and then click Search Engines.  Select a search engine and make sure you see the first option on the dimension field: “keyword”.  Google analytics enables you to see all keywords typed into any search engine for your selected date.

• Map Overlay – where are your users coming from?
  Kontera’s top earners are publishers whose sites  get over 55% US traffic.  The reason for this is that online advertisers invest much of their resources on traffic from the US.  While Kontera has partnerships with advertisers all over the world, the highest CPCs generated by your site originate from your US visitors.  An increase in US traffic has an immediate effect on earnings.

Use Analytics Map overlay to see exactly where on the globe your traffic is coming from.
Click Visitors then go to Map Overlay.

I hope you will find this information useful in making the most out of Kontera ContentLink ads  on your site!  If there’s anything I left out, or any additional tips you’d like to share please drop us a comment below.

Bryan Everett, Kontera’s SVP Business and Development, was interviewed on Adotas this week.  In a Q & A series, Everett presents an overview of Kontera- technology, history, and direction. Through this overview, Everett offers interesting insight into the world of In-Text contextual advertising.  Here’s a sneak peek:

Q: With more than 300 ad networks out there, how do you add value to advertisers? Publishers?

A: Considering the economic situation we’re in now, more advertising dollars will be pushed towards performance-based vehicles. As it relates to advertisers, what differentiates us from other ad networks is that we are a Cost-Per-Click based platform which means that they only pay for performance. In addition, we convert well for advertisers once users do click on an ad. For publishers, we provide a very strong additive eCPM to the overall page, as well as a solid user experience because we choose the most relevant keywords and ads at the most relevant and opportune time… Go to Article

2009 has only just begun and we’re kicking it off with a brand new post series -”The Kontera Publisher of the Month”.

Through this post series, each month we’ll introduce you to one of the most interesting and unique sites from amongst Kontera’s network of publishers. Ask-Leo.com, the first Kontera Publisher of the Month for 2009, is a perfect example of a website that truly deserves your bookmarks.

Ask-Leo is a website that offers answers to hundreds of tech questions in a variety of categories.  The site is easy to use, and provides thorough and informative advice that anyone from a tech newbie to an experienced programmer or webmaster will find useful.  Leo A. Notenboom, the man behind Ask-Leo, is a former software engineer for Microsoft who has decided to share his wealth of knowledge in the personal computer and software industry with Internet users worldwide.

As the owner of the January Kontera Publisher of the Month, Leo has agreed to answer a few questions for us; we hope you’ll enjoy this interview.

It’s widely known that you were a Microsoft employee for over a decade prior to starting ask-leo!; what was the impetus for starting your own business?

I didn’t actually set out to start a business. After 18 years at Microsoft I “retired”. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that my job was also my hobby, so I couldn’t really stop playing with computers and technology. I have some friends who are also internet entrepreneurs, and I started to dabble in a world outside of Microsoft.  As you might expect family and friends were always asking me questions, so I started to write up the answers to questions I was getting asked most often. Those entrepreneur friends gave me guidance on things like web site construction, search engines and the like, and they also pointed out that this might well be a revenue opportunity. That was in 2003, and the rest, as they say, is history.

How many questions were submitted to Ask-Leo during 2008? What were the most common types of questions?

I don’t have an exact count, but on average I get between 50 and 100 questions and blog comments (which are often also questions) per day. So I’d put it in the 25,000 range.

Most common, by far, are questions relating to password recovery, email account theft, and loss of email account access. After that it starts to vary widely into areas like Windows quirks, suspected hardware failures, specific software problems as well as issues around viruses and spyware.

What was the strangest question you have received?

There are so many to choose from, I don’t think I could. But I certainly do collect the odd and off-beat questions, and each year on the anniversary of Ask Leo! (August 10th), I post a “best of” collection on my personal blog. You can see last year’s collection, and links to the prior years, here: http://ask-leo.com/d-bestof5. I will say this: I’m somewhat surprised, and a little concerned, at the frequency I get asked for relationship advice – I am a computer geek, after all.

Thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs start their own website/blogs daily with the hopes of building a profitable, internet-based business.   What “words of wisdom” do you have for these fledgling entrepreneurs?

There are no shortcuts, but well focused and well directed hard work can be both rewarded and rewarding.

Getting Ask Leo! up and running was a fair amount of work, and it took a goodly amount of time before it truly started to look like a business. It was probably two years before it was generating a reasonable amount of revenue. During that time I was carefully learning about what it means to write authentic content for the web, what it means to be search engine friendly, and what it takes to manage a resource of this magnitude.

Even then that’s not enough. I’m actually a fairly small player in what happens to be an extremely large segment (on-line tech support). It’s a great segment for me, because in many ways answering people’s questions is what I was doing anyway. Formalizing that, and doing it myself in a public venue like Ask Leo! not only capitalizes on my experience and interests, but also allows me to differentiate myself from other players by simply being myself. Every Ask Leo! article (save one, I believe) was written by me, and I plan to keep it that way. In all honesty, that’s part of what keeps it fun for me.

Another point of common wisdom is the adage “find a problem and solve it”. I don’t have to find problems, they come to me. I can’t solve them all, but when I can, everyone walks away happy, myself included.

When did you start to monetize Ask-Leo and what role does In-Text advertising play in your overall monetization strategy?

It actually started out as a for-pay service. For $27 I would answer your question or give you your money back. That lasted only a couple of months. Google’s AdSense program was picking up steam, and of course I signed up. That’s when the power of advertising in general became readily apparent to me.

In-text advertising such as Kontera’s came along later, of course, but has become an important source of not just revenue, but security. I say there’s a natural concern about building businesses or websites around a single advertising relationship. Kontera’s participation in Ask Leo!’s profitability turned out to be significant, and definitely helps mitigate the risk of perhaps otherwise having all my eggs in one basket.

What also became readily apparent, is that contextual targeting is key. With a problem/solution site such as Ask Leo!, it’s not that uncommon for one of the ads to actually be the solution that my reader is looking for. It doesn’t get much better than that when it happens.

What sort of responses have you been getting from Ask-Leo users with regards to the various types of advertising you employ?

I get amazingly little feedback on the ads. Occasionally someone will confuse an Adsense ad as being some kind of recommendation from me, but I’ve not heard of that happening with Kontera ads. I do get occasional complaints, either for advertising in general or for the in-text ads, but that might be once every other month or so. Given that I’m running 1.3 million visitors a month right now, I consider “one in two million” an acceptable rate. (And I do make available and answer that includes instructions for people who would like to turn off the in-text ads.)

What’s in store for Ask-Leo users as we look to 2009?

Honestly, mostly more of same.

As we talk, I’m actually in the process of kicking off a major editorial review of the entire site, bringing the content up to more consistent level of quality, as quality is so key to continued success on the web. But that’s almost administrative in nature.

More visible will simply be my reacting to those 50-100 questions I get every day, and see where they take me. One of the reasons I so enjoy my career/hobby is that there’s something new every day; something to learn, to research or to play with. The fact that I can do so in a way that also helps people overcome some of the problems and frustrations they have with their computers is just fantastic.

The Kontera Publisher of the Month series kicked off in January of 2009. A publisher is selected from Kontera’s network each month and provides an insider’s perspective on what it takes to manage a successful site. To learn more visit the Publisher of the Month Category.

Kontera recently partnered with Pluck On Demand enabling its publishers access to contextually relevant, professionally-created, content and social media tools to increase publisher page views and user engagement. Kontera ContentLink will automatically populate within the Pluck on Demand content widget generating additional revenue for publishers.

What exactly is Pluck On Demand?

Pluck On Demand is a series of widgets that grow your site with contextually relevant content and social media tools.  The widgets read your site and offer links to relevant content from a library of millions of articles and videos. All content is consumed within your pages with your site’s look and feel and is pre-packaged with advertising.  This means incremental page views and revenue for your site.

How does it work?

Pluck On Demand’s free self-serve widget-based product can be added in minutes using an easy step-by-step implementation wizard.  Once in place, Pluck On Demand automatically reads content on a page and provides links to related articles and videos sourced from various high-quality content providers. The full article or video content is viewed within the publisher’s site, driving traffic and engagement.  Pluck On Demand also comes with social media features such as comments, ratings, recommendations, and user profiles, making it possible for publishers to instantly build vibrant community on their sites.
Check out the video to learn more http://ondemand.pluck.com/kontera

How do I sign-up?

Visit ondemand.pluck.com/kontera and add Pluck on Demand to your site today!

We’ve decided to aggregate some of the questions we receive regarding payment terms & methods. The extended versions of the answers below can be found in the Kontera knowledgeBase.
If you’re left with any payment questions after reading this post and the knowledgeBase, let us know, and we’ll gladly expand our guides to include more information.

When do I get paid?

Kontera’s payment terms are Net 30, first week of the month, when balance meets or exceeds US$100.  In plain English it means that payment is issued 30 days after the month in which the revenue was earned, when an account balance reaches $100. For example, if your account balance reaches $100 in October, we’ll send the payment to you in the first week of December.

What if my account balance is less than $100?

If your account balance is less than US$100 at the end of the month, earnings over US$5 (for all your sites combined) is rolled forward to the following month, until the payment threshold is reached.
You can view your account status at any moment by logging into your Publisher Center account and clicking on the reports tab.  Reports date back up to 180 days and any data prior to this time frame can be sent to you upon request.

Can I set a higher limit of when payments are released to me?

Sure.  Some of our partners prefer a payout amount which is higher than $100.  If this is the case for you, simply change the settings by logging into the Publisher Center and selecting the “My Account” Tab. Follow the ‘Payment Method’ link and enter the amount of your choice in the appropriate field.

What are the available payment methods?

Kontera’s available payment methods are as follows:

US Publishers
•    Check
•    EFT
•    Paypal

Publishers from Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland,  and the United Kingdom
•    Check
•    International ACH
•    Paypal

All Other International Publishers
•    Check
•    Wire
•    Paypal

And how do I change my payment method?

To change your payment method, login to your account and go to “My Account” tab, then click “Payment Method” to select your preferred option.  Click to find out more about changing your payment method to PayPal.

Knowledge is power;)  This is what makes tools like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools so useful and so popular. The general idea is that the more you know about your site’s user-behavior and visitor interests, the higher your chances of meeting the needs of those visitors.  In this sense, the information you are able to accumulate will serve your monetization efforts and contribute to your overall success.

Gaining a better understanding of your site’s metrics is a key factor in making the most out of Kontera’s PPC advertising. Kontera publishers already benefit from several useful reporting options such as the URL and Keyword reports. Today we’re excited to introduce the latest addition to the Kontera Publisher Center – the Reporting Channels.

What Are Channels and How Can I Use them?

The Channels feature offers a deeper level of analysis than that provided by overall reports. This new feature enables you to create individual reporting for a combination of pages or sections of your website and track and compare performance to that of other sections. By creating and employing Channels you’ll get comprehensive reporting for each section of your website and gain a better understanding of where your clicks are coming from.

How Do I Create Channels?

A few simple steps to follow:

1. Contact us via the “Help Tab” in the Kontera Publisher Center and request to enable “Channels.” You’ll be notified via email that the feature has been activated on your account.
2. Login to your account and select the “ContentLink Setup” tab. Follow the “Create Tag” link and then click on the “Create Channel” Button.



A new field will open. Fill in the Channel name and click on the “Submit Channel” button.



3. The system will now create your modified tag to include an additional line of code specifying its channel ID.



4. Copy and paste this new tag on all the pages you’d like associated with this particular channel.
   Be sure to replace your current Kontera tag with the modified tag on all the channel’s pages.

That’s it! Your Channels have been set.

To view all the channels you’ve created, select the “ContentLink Setup” tab and follow the “Channel” Link.

Now after all this, you’re probably interested in viewing your Channels reports…Simply select the “Reports” tab and click on the “Channel Detailed Report” link.

We hope you’ll find the Channels features useful and look forward to receiving your feedback.

Become a Kontera Publisher

Read Garry Conn’s post about the new Kontera Channels