It’s all right to change your mind. The fact that you’ve been receiving your Kontera cash through one payment method up to now, doesn’t mean it can’t change.
Kontera offers publishers several payment methods. Since we receive many questions regarding PayPal, or more specifically, how to switch to PayPal, I thought it would be a good idea to specify it here on our blog.

Switching to PayPal is a simple task to undertake:

Login to Kontera’s Publisher Center and select the “My Account” tab.
Follow the “Payment Method” link. Now click on the dropdown menu and select “PayPal”. Then type in your Paypal account name.

Here is a point to remember: Your PayPal Address and your Kontera account user name have to correspond. In the event that they are not the same, you’ll need to change your account email address. Go to the “Account Info” link and change your email address.
The next time you log in to the Publisher Center, recall that your login name has changed.

Any change you make to your account information, tax information and or selected payment method will be immediately updated in our system.

By Vered Avrahami

Introducing a taste of Kontera’s live advertising campaigns:

As of last night a Google search query for the term “advertising” yields some 1,010,000,000 results, if you’ll check it again now, the number will probably be higher. Advertising is everywhere, and can no longer be referred to as mere “sponsored messaging”; it has evolved and now offers consumers plenty of added-value.

The ads featured during the Super Bowl for example have their own devoted fans, and for a good reason. They are extremely creative skits, featuring A-list celebrities, and to say it out front – they’re fun. Ads introduced us to many memorable characters, my personal favorites being the Taco craving Chihuahua and the wireless company’s “can you hear me now?” guy. We all use witty ad slogans and catch phrases in everyday conversations – anyone forget the “Wazzup” beer campaign?

These are all examples of successful TV ad campaigns, but advertising online is where the future lies. Kontera’s In Text Ad Program presents a win-win situation for all members of online advertising ecosystem and we manage to do it, if to quote our very own slogan, by: Creating In Text Relevance.

Kontera lives up to the slogan’s 3 part promise. ContentLink ppc ad units guarantee maximum creative flexibility as they can include text, logos, video, audio, flash animations, and interactive forms. ContentLinks are placed where users’ attention is focused, within the text. And finally Kontera’s advanced technology ensures that the ads will be highly relevant to the content in which they’re featured, so ContentLinks simultaneously provide added user-value and a particularly well targeted advertising campaign. See for yourself.

By Vered Avrahami

Oscar night is right around the corner. It offers an enjoyable mixture of exciting film making, brilliant acting performances, stars strolling down the red carpet, and lots of on and off screen drama. Since we believe Kontera’s In-Text Advertising is very similar to product placement in movies, this is a great opportunity to explain why. Product placement basically means showcasing an advertiser’s brand as an integral part of a movie’s storyline and setting. A recent example can be found in the popular monster flick “Cloverfield”. A prominent manufacturer’s cell phones were an integral part of the plot, as the film’s lead characters were trying to escape the latest attack on NYC. “Cloverfield” served the featured cell phones well, but the cell phones returned a favor in promoting the film’s narrative.

Our ContentLink ads complement a website’s content in similar way: providing users with information which is relevant to the content of the webpage they are viewing. With ContentLinks, advertisers display their marketing messaging to potential customers that are engaged with topics related to that message. Kontera publishers enjoy numerous benefits, and inline with the beginning of this post, we were looking for a clip from an Academy Award winning movie to describe them.

Since Hollywood is not making films about heightened relevancy, improved customization options, and real-time page-analysis, we decided to bring in something short and to the point…

Take a look at this clip from a 1996 Academy Award winner:

By Vered Avrahami

One of the many great things about the online industry is that every publisher, regardless of size, can generate revenues from his web site or blog. To be an online entrepreneur, you don’t need years of experience or academic degrees; you don’t have to be a marketing expert, a confident webmaster or an advertising wiz; the only thing you are required to do, is to explore the various PPC Ad formats and contextual Advertising methods out there, and sign with the ones that are best suited for your website’s content and overall design. Naturally, we all have our preferences.

As internet users, we are accustomed to the idea that the web’s speedy development, along with free access to reading material, necessitate that a page’s real-estate be divided between content and advertising. We have also learned that advertising could complement content, by providing additional information, tailored to fit whatever it was that we were reading about. As part of our everyday online experience, we have all clicked on an eye catching banner, or on a text advertisement, one of the forms of contextual ads. The newest kid in the PPC advertising block is In-Text Advertising. Kontera’s In-Text advertising preserves the advantages presented by other forms of advertising while introducing new benefits to publishers, advertisers and users.

Kontera’s ContentLinks™ change the rules. In the past when a publisher was interested in increasing his advertising revenues, he was required to allocate additional web page “real estate” for ad placement. This action could potentially impair his content and deter users. With Kontera In-Text, a publisher’s ad-inventory is as vast as his content, since every word could serve as an opportunity for advertisers to communicate with their audience.

With ContentLinks, publishers are granted control over the placement and number of PPC In-Text ads inserted in their content. Publishers are also able to customize the color of the double-underlined Keywords, in order to differentiate them from regular links, and assure that they match the website’s design. These characteristics of Kontera In-Text Advertising guarantee that the publisher remains the decision maker regarding his site’s attributes.

More on our BlogWorld adventures- Assaf Henkin, Kontera’s VP Product and Co-Founder, introduces smart ways to monetize your blog. And of course, John Chow has something to say about his experience with Kontera…

A few weeks back we announced the launch of Kontera’s very own Video Testimonial Contest. We received many great emails, some of you asked for additional information, some simply mentioned they like the idea, and many of you suggested we change the prizes offered.

We take your comments and suggestions very seriously, so we’ve made some changes :

Shoot the winning video and win $500!

Second place video wins you $250

Third place wins you $100

We can’t wait to watch what you come up with…

Here’s how to enter:

Create an original video/animated flash describing your ContentLink™ experience and the benefits using Kontera has brought to your site/blog. Be as creative and imaginative as you’d like, and remember that good humor can win you more than a laugh…

STEP 1:

What you should include:

• Length of video/animated flash: up to 3 minutes

• Tell of how and when you started using Kontera

• What sort of impact and benefit ContentLink made for your site/blog

• Your name and website/company name

• Whatever other biographical details you want to include

STEP 2:

Upload your video to YouTube
Tag it: Kontera, Contentlink, In-Text, contextual, advertising, ad

STEP 3:

Send the URL to video@kontera.com

Contest Rules

1. To enter the contest you must be a current Kontera publisher or advertiser.
2. By entering this Contest, you explicitly grant Kontera the right to use and publish the biographical information that you provide in the video. This does not include any other information Kontera has (such as email, street address, telephone number).
3. Submitted videos must not include any profanity or indecent images. Kontera does not work with adult content and gaming advertisers or publishers.
4. Submitted videos must comply with Kontera Terms and Conditions and YouTube Terms and Conditions.
5. Contest begins January 1, 2008 and ends March 1, 2008.

We have welcomed many new publishers to our network through our $25 bonus offer.

It’s been both good and reassuring to discover that so many great blogs out there easily meet the 50,000 impressions line.

For those of you who still haven’t had a chance to sign up and for those who waited till the last minute, we’ve decided to extend the bonus offer a little while longer. To start the New Year with something extra…

Click Here To Find Out More

Happy and fruitful 2008!

BlogWorld was an important (and fun!) event. As one the panelists, Kontera’s VP, Product and Co-Founder, Assaf Henkin, had some interesting facts to share about the online marketing world today, with a special focus on the smart ways to monetize your blog.

But the best part for us was in getting to meet many of our partners face to face. This doesn’t happen often enough in the high-speed digital world.

A well known online entrepreneur and Kontera publisher, Joel Comm, has a few words to say about his experiences with Kontera. Get ready for a short video interview:

By Vered Avrahami

Surfing the web with the aim of finding a standard definition for the term “Web 2.0” produces an abundance of information revolving around this issue. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that this is the “User Generated Content” era. Blogs have a devoted readership, Forums have become a trustworthy resource for necessary advice, and users often spend as much time interacting in their Online Communities as they do with their friends. People spend longer hours online and this time is utilized for consuming information of personal value and interest. Our Internet experience has become personalized.

Publishers devote a great deal of time and effort to meet this trend. A great deal of attention is invested in the various aspects of managing a successful web site or a blog. These aspects include constant production of interesting new content, creation and maintenance of eye-catching design, traffic building and more. All this time and effort should rightfully be translated into income and therefore publishers usually divide their web-page real-estate between content and advertising. All this considered, has online advertising evolved to suit the market demand of the web 2.0 era? We believe that ContnetLink™ has.

The online advertising ecosystem is comprised of advertisers, publishers and users and ContentLink™ has proven beneficial to them all. Our technology enables advertisers to maximize their ROI while ensuring a high level of relevancy between keywords, ads, content and the user’s frame of mind. ContentLink™ provides users with information that is relevant to what they were searching thus enriching their user-experience. ContentLinks™ unique attributes enable it to achieve all the above while preserving publishers’ complete control over their sites. ContentLink™ simultaneously addresses the needs of all the members of the online advertising ecosystem – isn’t that the very essence of a Web 2.0 ad platform?

Read More on ContentLinks™ from Behind the Scenes>>

By Mika Tal

Many publishers find the combination of Google adsense along with Kontera ContentLinks™ to be highly successful. Since ContentLinks ads are quite different in appearance than adsense, they do not take away from the income adsense brings but rather serve as an additional revenue stream.

One of our publishers, Carlos of www.virtualpetlist.com, speaks about the revenue increase in his forum occuring since he started using ContentLinks™:

“Kontera has really helped increase my daily earnings. Adsense was averaging $5/day on my community for me and now since I’ve implemented Kontera on my community, my daily earnings are now $10 - $20/day. I recommend Kontera to any new webmaster that is trying to earn money from their community.”

Nice going for virtualpetlist.com!