We want both our large and small publishers to benefit and win as well.

Kontera “Triple Play” — Three new ways for publishers to gain extra revenues between now and the end of the year.

1. Optimize for Revenues – Take Advantage of the biggest ad spending quarter of the year. Increase your revenues by implementing our Tips and Tricks to optimize Kontera across your sites. We provide some proven techniques that will help you maximize your earnings during the end of the year and holiday season.

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2. MVP Rewards – Tell Us Your Kontera Success, Win a Kindle

   We want to hear from you! We’re always interested to learn more about the publishers in our network, their experience with Kontera In Text ads, and how Kontera is helping them. Send us a link to your post or story about your successes with Kontera and you will be entered to win one of several Amazon Kindles and gift certificates that we are giving away for the best submissions. All Our MVP winners will also be featured in Kontera’s all-star gallery series of blog posts.

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3. Heavy-Hitters’ Special – If you regularly receive Kontera earnings of more than $1500 per month, then we should talk! Kontera can significantly increase your In Text Advertising earnings for the October through December timeframe. There is no better way to get additional end- of- year revenues. Simply send us an email to support@kontera.com with “Heavy Hitters Bonus” in the subject line, and our team members will follow-up to get you into this exciting program.

• More Page Views Yield Greater Revenues: Add Kontera tags to all pages and as many sections of your site as possible, to earn maximum revenues.
• Seasonal Relevance Wins: Having interesting content that is relevant for through October-December advertising pay dividends. Keep in mind the type of advertisers that spend during this time of year. For example, a holiday season shopping guide or thoughtful opinions on the latest automotive models will probably yield greater results than planning for next summer’s vacation. Having seasonally relevant and fresh content will increase coverage, CPC, and CTRs resulting in record busting eCPMs.
• Consider Changing Link Color: New color usually makes In Text links more prominent to your users resulting in higher CTRs and greater revenues.
• Use Zone or Filter Tags: Keep our analysis and links targeted to your content and away from outlying areas like headers, sidebars, footers, etc.
• Keep it Clean: Avoid producing content with profanity or sensitive topics as quality brands avoid this type of content and our technology screens the content.
• Revisit Maximum Link Parameters: Limiting links to 1, 2, or 3 per page can hinder CTR and prevent you from monetizing to your sites’ full potential.
• More Sites: The easiest way to make more money is to add more sites to the Kontera program.   If you have more sites then let us know and we will get you additional tags.

The last two weeks of summer are bound to spark the travel bug in all of us and people are getting restless to take one more trip before school starts again.  Cruising, flying, and luxury hotels—anything goes, and ‘Travel’ related keywords are more attractive than ever.

In ‘Sports’ it’s been a dramatic summer on one of golf’s majors – the ‘PGA Championship’ – as Y.E. Yang, beat none other than the sport’s No. 1 guy – ‘Tiger Woods’. To those of us who are looking for a different type of sporting thrills the ‘UFC’ provided a good viewing alternative to Golf.

Award winning show ‘Mad Men’ is back and it’s more clickable than ever. That said, it takes a lot more than Madison Avenue advertisers or the ‘District 9′ aliens to move ‘Vanessa Hudgens’ from her place at the top of the ‘Entertainment’ category. The 40th anniversary of the ‘Woodstock Festival’ generated a lot of click-love and what better way to bring summer to a close than by listening to some great music while wearing flowers in your hair?

Kontera’s Top Keywords Post Series brings to you the most clicked terms per category each month. For additional posts visit Top Clicked Keywords.

Since every site’s build is different in design, content, length/number of pages, employed monetization strategies, as well as in user feedback, finding the proper ratios of page content to ad real-estate is unique to each site.   We wanted to take the opportunity to remind you of ways to groom your site for making the most of Kontera In-Text.

If you’re employing multiple advertising methods on your pages, it is important to make sure that advertising is evenly distributed throughout the entirety of the page. Kontera offers tools to specify areas of a page where ContentLink ads should or shouldn’t be placed by telling our Java Script which text is eligible for generating links.

For example, if you have a dominant series of banner ads next to a brief section of text, you may want to avoid generating ContentLinks in that section by using Filter Tags.  Similarly if you have a text–based menu bar on the top of your page, and a large section of text below, you definitely want to use a Zone Tag to instruct Kontera to only scan in article.  As you probably know, Adsense and Kontera are a great combination, but be sure to maximize the effect of both, by spreading the ads throughout your pages.

Furthermore, upon publisher’s request, our Support Team will gladly make adjustments to link density which is essentially the number of links per 1000 words on a page.  Test to discover the optimal number of ads for your pages, once you do you’ll be sure improve both your users’ experience and your ads performance.

Using a unique tag for each one of your sites is important as it enables us to separately track individual performance, as well as make sure that the tag settings are fully optimized to specifically match your sites’ attributes. By using the correct tag you ensure that we’ll provide you with the best and most relevant ad targeting for your sites’ content niche and structure.

Say that when you first signed-up to join Kontera, you applied with your computing related blog. A few weeks later, you decided to add your forum which deals with mobile phones as well as your extreme sports site to your Kontera account. While our contextual analysis technology analyzes each page in real-time to identify its topics and main Keywords, some of ContentLink’s attributes are changes by our Optimization Team. These tweaks are based on each site’s performance, traffic trends, length of its pages, content niche etc. Needless to say that by using the same tag across multiple and diverse sites will result in your missing out on the benefits of this optimization.

Having accurate knowledge of each of your sites’ individual performance is important as it provides us with a clear indication if everything is running smoothly, or if further optimization is required. As a publisher this gives you the option to customize your ContentLinks and detailed reporting. With separate tracking you can accurately analyze your sites’ metrics, which as we all know, is a well known hobby within the internet community

We’d like to take the opportunity and mention that the Kontera ContentLink tag is unique per site, not per publisher. If you are already a Kontera Publisher and would like to add ContentLink ads to more of your sites, we will generate a specific, unique tag for each one of your sites. This is important for two main reasons:

1. Relevancy- by generating a unique tag for each site in your network, we are able to optimize each tag according to a site’s niche.  This means you get better, more relevant ads for each site in your network. It is especially important if you have sites on a variety of topics.
2. Tracking- each tag represents the performance of one individual site in your network.  This way you can have accurate knowledge of each site, its performance and earnings.  This helps us as we look at your network and try to determine where and how to optimize.

To take tracking another level deeper, use the Kontera Channels.  This feature enables you to create individual reporting for particular pages or sections of one specific website.  To have detailed knowledge of a site’s metrics, you can compare the performance of one page or section to that of another.

Requesting to add sites to your Kontera network is a simple process and only requires a quick e-mail request to the Support team.  The best way to do this is by logging into your account in the Publisher Center and clicking on the help tab.  If you choose to write us from your mailbox, be sure to mention your Kontera login email.

We mention this since we’ve been getting an increase of questions from publishers regarding Flash and ContentLink ads. Will ContentLink ads be affected by flash units featured on a webpage?

ContentLink Ads are usually unaffected by Flash units. Still, as there are multiple parameters incorporated in each flash code, if you feel that they’re causing any irregularity in your ads’ appearance you can follow these steps:

Use transparent mode when loading the Flash unit to your HTML code. Transparent mode allows the background color or image of the HTML page that contains the Flash unit to show through.

This can be achieved by making the following adjustments to your Flash unit’s code:

1. For the <OBJECT> tag, add the following parameter: <param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”>
2. For the <EMBED> tag, add the following parameter: wmode=”transparent”

The web provides ample resources for anyone interested in learning more about creating and using Flash, but be sure to stop by Flashkit.com, a great site that Kontera’s  very own Flash developers recommend.

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.

Content optimization for your targeted keywords is also an important factor in maximizing your results with the various pay per click advertising methods employed on your website or blog. It’s safe to assume that the popular keywords in your niche are also in high demand by advertisers targeting your niche’s users. When creating new content, are you making sure that your content is keyword rich and in line with current search trends of your target audience?

Word cloud was created with Wordle

Kontera’s contextual advertising technology analyzes your content and determines what it’s all about. During the analysis process, keywords are chosen according to relevancy, click-through rates, and revenue potential. We then utilize all these parameters to match your keywords with the most targeted, highest paying ads for your site. Guess you see the connection, right?

There are countless articles about successful keyword research and the various tools you can utilize for this, but we wanted to remind you of two great keyword related tools that Kontera offers publishers:

Keyword Report – This report, available through the Publisher Center “Reports” tab, enables you to identify your site’s top performing Keywords during the last week.  This is a current list of the most clickable keywords on your pages; by adding these keywords to new content you create, you should positively influence your site’s performance.

“Kontera’s Top Clicked Keywords” posts series – While your account’s keyword report provides you with an accurate depiction of your site’s top performers, in this series of posts we provide a glimpse into the larger picture. Every few weeks we share Kontera’s top clicked keywords in a variety of content categories – be sure to follow this as the next post may include your niche and grant you with valuable inside information you can use.

“iphone” is always a top-clicked keyword in the Consumer Electronics category, but as the holiday shopping proved, “Nintendo wii” is a strong contender for first place in this particular niche.

“The Pussycat Dolls” are going on a European tour with Lady Gaga, if clicks are any indication tickets are probably sold out. It’s twin girls for “Rebecca Romijn” and husband Jerry O’Connell, and this happy news generated many clicks for the “Ugly Betty” actress. It’s the award season so it’s hardly surprising that “red carpet” and “Golden Globe Award” are topping the clickable keyword list in the Entertainment category.

A new year is always filled with promise and hopes and apparently it’s a season that attracts good business for astrologers… The Society & Culture category is dominated by astrology related keywords with many users interested in a prediction of how 2009 will unfold.

Against the backdrop of Facebook’s “breast feeding” controversy, we’ve witnessed a rise in this keyword’s popularity within the Health category. But can you speculate what sparked the sudden popularity of “face lift” in January?

Category Top Clicked Keywords Consumer Electronics iphone nintendo wii portable media player Bluetooth Entertainment red carpet Golden Globe Award Rebecca Romijn The Pussycat Dolls Computing & Internet windows XP windows vista DVD Decrypter laptopr Health side effect medical condition breast feeding face lift Society & Culture zodiac sign sun sign horoscope astrology Sports quarterback workout routine Manchester United Junkyard Dog Real Estate affordable housing apartment finder apartments for rent home loans

The “Top Clicked Keywords” post series is aimed at providing you additional information about the top performing keywords in our network.  For previous posts visit our Top Clicked Keywords Category.