At the beginning of the summer, as we were looking for an opportunity to bring together our rapidly growing San Francisco office and to have some team fun, the idea of a community service initiative emerged quite naturally. Many Kontera employees have a strong personal involvement in various non-profits, and were therefore thrilled to partner with their work colleagues to do some good and contribute to the community.

Everyone had a chance to submit a proposal for a project, and to vote for their favorite partner organization. After some passionate debates, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy was selected as the lucky winner for our first “Kontera Serve” initiative.

On the afternoon of August 11^th, 34 of our San Francisco employees headed to Ocean Beach, the largest urban beach in California, for a clean-up expedition.

The weather forecast proved once again that it’s not an exact science, and just because it’s August, doesn’t mean we should expect it to be warm and sunny (supporting Mark Twain, who once asserted: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”). Yet, our fearless crew was up for the challenge!

Armed with gloves, jackets, hats, tongs and a contagious positive energy, we thoroughly combed about a mile of the beach – as far as the eye could see, and collected more than 30 bags of trash!

After three hours, we gathered for a well deserved break, accompanied with food and drinks – a great opportunity to hang out with some old friends, and to bond with more recently hired colleagues. We all enjoyed the opportunity to come together as a team, and the rewarding feeling of having accomplished something positive!

Check out the video below to see us in action.

A special congratulation to the winners of our trash collection contest: Cory, MariCate and Brian for the largest amount of trash collected, and Lauren, Aliza and Ammiel for the most unexpected piece of trash found (if you’re wondering: an old Russian VHS tape, of “Fire in the Snow”).

Are you up to speed with the latest count: Facebook recently announced that over 350,000 websites  worldwide are now using Facebook’s social plugins introduced last April – the most familiar of which is the ‘Like‘ button.

This piece of information ties in to another “fun fact”: Nearly 65 million users ‘Like’ something through Facebook every single day.

Clearly, people like to ‘Like’, and thousands of publishers already reap the benefits – sharing their news and content via the popular social network site.

The reason the ‘Like’ button has been so effective for so many website owners isn’t exactly a secret. With one mouse click, a link to your latest post or article will instantly appear in the News Feed of your friends’ Facebook accounts. It’s a great way to grow traffic and create a buzz around your website: For every additional person that hits the ‘Like’ button on one of your website pages (including yourself ); an exponential amount of their friends will see what you’ve been raving about.

With over 500 million active users each month (and counting!), and with each user having, on average, 130 friends – there’s a vast audience for the right content to go viral.

As a publisher, you’re naturally interested in increasing your website traffic. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to consider adding the ‘Like’ functionality to your website or blog. If you’d like to get the Facebook ‘Like’ plugin for Wordpress, you can do so here, or for Blogger here. And if you’d like to learn more about implementation in general, here’s the Facebook Like Button Page.

Also, don’t forget to ‘Like’ this post. As you can see below, Kontera most definitely practices what it preaches

In the past, we discussed several optimization tips for websites running Kontera In-Text ads – from link color and its affect on CTR, controlling the way ads appear on your pages, opening ads in a new window, adding sites, and more.

Another popular tool you could use to maximize Kontera results on your website sits comfortably right in your Publisher Center. Yes, we’re talking about the Keyword Report and URL Report found under the “Reports” tab in your Admin console. When was the last time you used them?

With these two reports you can gain more granular visibility and better insight into how your content is performing with Kontera In-Text ads.

• The Keyword Report displays the top keyword phrases that our In-Text Engine selected to highlight on your pages – and the percentage of clicks that these keywords received.
• The URL Report shows which pages from within your site are generating the most clicks.

By examining these two reports, you can figure out which topics of interest and keywords are working best for you on the Kontera network. Best of all, this high-performing content is around topics that:

1. You already enjoy writing about
2. Your readers already enjoy reading, and interacting with the In-Text ads displayed within this content.

You can use this insight to decide which topics to expand on in the future – balancing content guidelines and end-users preferences with site monetization.

The Key is Balance. So Don’t Forget:

1. Our algorithm is always evolving- “learning” your content, and highlighting new keyword phrases to match your users’ intent with the current ad inventory and advertisers preferences. So don’t get too “stuck up” on a certain topic or overuse a certain keyword. We wouldn’t want to bore your readers…
2. And Keep Writing, Writing, Writing… In a time when the internet can deliver every bell and whistle imaginable, there’s still nothing more important than providing quality content.  That’s the only way to attract new visitors and retain them.

Search engines put a high premium on sites that can consistently deliver new content, making it essential for Publishers who want to be successful to constantly update their sites. Additionally, Kontera In-Text technology requires Content-rich sites for us to analyze and display ads on. So the more pages you have with quality text, the more places you’ll have Kontera ads on – so that your revenue grows as you become a more prolific writer!

In the face of an impending “heatpocalypse” and record breaking temperatures, Kontera’s New York office rode out the heat wave with some sprinkles and ice cream cones.

In four separate events taking place in downtown New York City, Konterans stirred up summertime nostalgia with free Mr. Softee’s ice cream, served straight from the iconic truck.

Undaunted by humidity and the crowds, employees at NY Ad Agencies, such as Mediacom, Mindshare, Maxus, Mediavest, and Mediaedge, thronged the sidewalks in search of a scoop. Konterans mingled with the crowds as the queue wove around city blocks, giving us a chance to catch up with old contacts and greet new faces. As an extra cherry on top of generous helpings of vanilla and chocolate soft serve, agency employees had the chance to win an American Express gift card in the Kontera sponsored raffle.

After a great afternoon “meet and eat”, there was no doubt Kontera had found the right way to beat the heat.

Back in the air-conditioned office, Kontera employees got busy once again setting up Topically-Targeted Campaigns with our sophisticated new Synapse Engine, to deliver our advertisers what they REALLY want (besides a cone of Mr. Softee)… Great Results!

 
Don’t take it from us, take it from MediaPost.

Last week we announced that comScore, the leading internet marketing research firm, recently completed a three-month comprehensive study into the effectivness of Kontera In-Text advertising for both advertisers and end users.

When examining end-users’ attitudes toward various forms of online advertising, the comScore study revealed consumers view Kontera In-Text ads as:

• Cleaner, Less cluttering ads
  
• More relevant ad-format
• Least Intrusive ad-format

This is great information: as most publishers and webmaster are already comfortable with the effect traditional ads have on their users, we now know Kontera In-Text ads – as the next evolution in online advertising – perform even better!

How did we rank so high?
In a Word: Relevancy.

Kontera Synapse, our new Relevancy Engine, is the master-mind behind it all. Kontera Synapse’ patented technology analyzes the content and other attributed of the web page to determine the topics of interests and intent of end users who visit the page. It is then able to make the most relevant associations for them, displaying the most relevant ads or related-information that echo their interests.

With end users receiving content that matches their intent – both them and advertisers benefit. Kontera In-Text ads enable advertisers to connect with a large, qualified audience, and reach consumers where and when they are most engaged. Their ads appear front-and-center within the text of the page and closely linked to the users’ interests.

On Tuesday, we had a Webinar with comScore discussing Best Practices for High Impact Online Advertising and the performance of Kontera In-Text ads. The event was a huge success! Due to popular demand, we’ve added a second Webinar with IAB on August 11th that you can still register for if you wish to learn more about why Kontera In-Text advertising is so effective.