Contextual advertising is a place at the top of search engines, payment for which is based on the number of visits to the site. It is that appears in the top lines of the search engine when we enter into the field your query. It is as if the answer to a request "hot" client to buy a laptop or tablet in his city. This is the easiest and most versatile method of attracting customers to the E-Commerce store, as it is available not only to large market players but also for beginners in online business. 

Contextual advertising in the top of Google search engine

Statistics show that users most often click on the first three or four items in the list, without paying much attention to the "Advertising" mark. Click to get your statistics permanently. Block "Google My Business" allows you to place your store with a photo and mode of operation, a brief description and a point on the map in the search engine on a key request. It may seem that this block is also advertising. In fact, it is absolutely free service, created for the convenience and usefulness of customers. But not everyone has this block. Therefore it is very important to specify the real address of your shop to have such a presentable business card on search in your subject.

Setting up an advertising campaign

You can create an advertising campaign in Google AdWords within an hour: just create an account, set up targeting and deposit money into your account. Settings of contextual advertising have a very flexible mechanism for budget management: you can limit the cost of a click (go to your store), the number of transitions, the daily rate of displays or automatically control the auction. The cost per click on different requests may vary greatly depending on the number of competitors. But even for the same request, it can jump, as on the financial exchange, based on supply and demand. A personal advertising cabinet also allows you to set the start and end date of the advertising campaign, the time of displaying ads, the geographical location of potential buyers and other parameters.

Then you can start selecting key requests from the collected semantic core or using the built-in service. When creating ads for each of them, use keywords and a call to action, as well as a short link to your site. Specify the minus-words, when mentioning which your ad will not be shown. If you do not have discounts and promotions, you can add to the list of minus-words "free", "discount" and "promotion".

a/b advertisement testing

The advanced settings of the Google AdWords account also have an "Experiment" tab, which allows you to test ads by showing version A to one half of the audience and version B to the other half.

You can change it:

• the length and content of the headlines;
• calls for action;
• availability and absence of price;
• description text;
• link to the site;
• picture of the goods and background;
• color and text of the call for action button;
• location and dimensions of the elements.

After the split-test, go to the "Segment - experiment" tab and compare the results. This test will allow you to find out which ads have higher CTR and focus on this format.

Advantages of context advertising in its availability to all business entities, instant presence in the top, detailed configuration of filters, the ability to test and analyze the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. It is also very important that the payment is made only for "hot" transfers to the site, shows are absolutely free.

The disadvantage of contextual advertising is that the price per click can exceed the profit from the attracted client, who will buy a cheap thing or even leave with nothing. The minus is considered a temporary result: once you stop replenishing your account, sales will fall. In addition, advanced users develop distrust and blindness to advertising content.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of contextual advertising

Systems of analytics allow to estimate quantitative and qualitative metrics of efficiency of an advertising campaign:

• transitions to the site on advertising;
• calls, orders, subscriptions;
• income from transactions, the average check;
• clickability (CTR);
• conversion rate;