A Simple Explanation of Contextual Ads

What are contextual ads

Contextual advertisements are ads that are served to the viewer based on what kind of content they are looking at. The system chooses which advertisements it will deliver based on the context in which those ads are being viewed.

A contextual advertising system analyzes the content that is being delivered to the user, and selects advertisements that are closely related to that content in order to increase the probability that the ads will have some sort of impact on the user. Here are a few examples of contextual advertisements:

• Text ads for data recovery software on a blog post about restoring digital photos from a corrupt memory card.
• Banner ads for sporting equipment on a baseball website.
• Advertisements for camera equipment on a message board for photography enthusiasts.

Most contextual advertising companies give the publisher of a website special code to insert into their web pages. When a viewer loads a web page, that code analyzes the content of the page and fetches and appropriate advertisement from the ad server.

The goal of an advertisement is to have some sort of effect on the viewer — it could be as simple as increasing brand awareness, or as aggressive as convincing the person to make a purchase. Contextual advertisements are meant to increase the likelihood that this will happen by making educated guesses about what a person is interested in based on what kind of content they have requested from the website publisher.