What the entry of Amazon.com into the contextual ads market means
| by David Callan There has been plenty of talk about the rather unexpected entry of Amazon.com into the ppc (pay-per-click) contextual ads market, which has taken many people completely by surprise. All eyes had been fixed on the upcoming launch by MSN ads of their own improved Adsense-like program for contextual ads.Actually the news about Amazon.com’ intentions is more than just talk
because a number of people have confirmed being approached by Amazon to test
this new exciting service of theirs.
Actually in a way Amazon’s latest move should not be that surprising because it will be remember that the Amazon.com site has been responsible for many innovations in the area of marketing. For instance it was Amazon.co that lifted affiliate marketing to new levels of acceptance. Today a number of online entrepreneurs make obscene amounts of money by simply being members of a few hot affiliate companies that are closely related to the subject matter of their site.
So what does this mean to advertisers and online publishers currently using other services like Adsense and Overture?
Good News For Publishers
An interesting development is the fact that in testing their brand new service, Amazon have naturally turned to leading high traffic bloggers and webmasters. Basically the same guys who are currently the leading Adsense affiliates. The response has been predictable, most of them are not willing to abandon Google Adsense to test the Amazon.com ads. Google Adsense’ strict terms and conditions do not allow for publishers to carry the competing textual ads that resemble Adsense ads.
This new development is a clear indication that power in this game is bound to shift very shortly to the publishers. That is the blog owners and webmasters who display these PPC ads at their sites. Blogs and sites enjoying high traffic will be especially valuable to advertisers.
This also means that Contextual and ppc ad providers will offer increasingly attractive terms to retain their army of leading publishers even as new providers enter the market determined to break the total market domination that Google has enjoyed for so long, with their Adsense program.
Relevant Test Ads Really Do Work
Above all else these recent developments are a clear indication of the power of text ads and just how effective they can be. This is significant because for a long time now, worried experts have been demonstrating how conventional ads do not work online. They have mainly been referring to banner ads, pop-ups and the so called pop-under ads.
The truth of the matter is that people hate to be advertised to online and will go to great lengths to avoid ads. Software developers have reported brisk sales for any product that deals with unwanted pop-ups ads and pop-under ads for instance.
It is now clear that the World Wide Web is an amazing advertising medium, only that the rules are very different from Television or any other media. For starters the ad message should be directly relevant to the information being searched. And the ads should not look like ads at all. The more they resemble the rest of the text on the site, the higher the response they tend to pull in.
This is precisely where Adsense contextual ads have thrived and quickly grown into a multi-billion dollar business and the main engine driving Google profits.
Ad Revenue Now Shifting Online
Contextual ads are in fact the main reason why ad revenues are now showing a clear trend of shifting online and away from the shrinking main stream media.
The main, highly attractive aspect of these text ads is that advertisers pay only for results. That is the number of people who actually click through to visit their sites. This makes it very possible for an advertiser to start with a very small amount and just re-invest their profits from the ads and grow their advertising budget into a very big number just from the responses they receive. Indeed many small business advertisers have been able to completely revolutionize their sales and their businesses in general, mainly by using Google Adsene.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that we are not only living in extremely exciting times, but all indications are that webmasters and bloggers who clearly understand the current trends and the direction we are headed to, stand to make lots of cash on a consistent basis as serious online entrepreneurs.
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