General Blog

Contextual advertising means that ads which appear on a web page are related to its content, as determined by a spider (or robot) which scans the page and sends instructions to the advertising program about what ads to serve. This means that if your page is about fishing, you’ll get ads related to fishing, such as fishing gear, baits or hooks. If the program has a good technology of content scanning and a broad range of advertisers, then the ads appearing on a web page will be very targeted, and readers will be interested in them. When a visitor clicks an ad, you are paid a certain amount of money, which depends on the advertiser’s bid, and which can be between $0.01 for less competitive niches, and even tens of US dollars for the niches with lots of major players.

Advantages of contextual advertising

1. Low admission barrier: there is no traffic limit for your blog to get accepted, so even small, new blogs can use it
2. Easy integration: you can blend the ads with your page layout, in order to make it look like being a part of it, without having to know any programming language
3. High CTR: if well optimized, on niche sites, contextual advertising can have 10%-20% CTR, which is a very good rate.

Drawbacks of contextual advertising

1. Cheap look: many people perceive ads which serve contextual ads as being low quality, or made especially for the purpose of serving ads (maybe you’ve come across the term MFA, which means Made For AdSense)
2. Low performance on sticky sites: readers have to click away and leave your site, in order for you to get money.

List of contextual advertising programs

Google AdSense: the most known and widespread contextual pay-per-click advertising program. I’ve been using AdSense since 2006, and I can say that they are trustful, and they pay as promised in their terms of service. You have to make at least $100 before they’d issue a payment.
Yahoo Publisher Network: in order to be accepted, you need to have a valid US Social Security or Tax ID number, and your website must be predominantly in English and targeted at a US user base. The payment threshold is also $100

Miva Monetization Center

AdSonar
Adify
AdBrite

ShoppingAds: not exactly a contextual ads service, but you have the possibility to choose keywords for your ads block, so it will display only ads related to whatever you choose. All Non-US traffic will always see CPA (Cost-Per-Action) ads, regardless of your campaign configuration. The US visitors will see Cost-Per-Click (CPC) ads.