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Content Targeted Advertising

In the heady days of the dot.com boom webmasters could generate a reasonable revenue stream from banner adverts. These are images placed along the top of web pages. CPM rates (cost per 1000 views) of $50 were not unheard of. Banner adverts frequently advertised other websites and were paid for with money from venture capital or the IPO. With the collapse of the dot.coms advertising dried to a trickle and rates plummeted.

Many surfers also developed a condition dubbed 'banner blindness'. The more in-the-face banners became the more users were able to mentally screen them out. Response or click through rates were abysmal. With a return to reality many advertisers preferred to develop partnerships with websites using affiliate services such as Commission Junction and paying commissions on leads or sales.

In a search for a revenue stream some search engines started offering sponsored links. These links were related to the search query and where they were clearly differentiated from the results they could be valuable to both searcher and advertiser alike. Pricing was still problematic. eBay had shown the way with online auctions and Overture obtained a patent for the process of running a keyword auction. In this advertisers bid for search queries and the highest bids have their links placed next to the results pages.

Content Targeted Advertising

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