I’ve run a test using the Kontera advertising for the past 60 days on various websites, which is providing some positive results. For those not familiar with Kontera, it is a contextual advertiser that provides inline real-time advertising on keywords. Here’s their official description:

A contextually relevant keyword that is discovered in real-time on a web page from within Kontera´s vast network of publishers, and is automatically turned into a link to the most relevant ad from among Kontera´s thousands of advertisers. With ContentLink™ publishers generate incremental revenue while advertisers reach their most targeted audience on a Cost-Per-Click basis.

(Kontera’s AdLink page - explains how keyword-tagged advertising works)

I’m always hesitant on using new forms of advertising, mainly because I believe it could erode the success of other advertising, such as the c/t on Google AdSense. However, I am pleased with the performance of Kontera. I have very little degradation to the c/t rates of most websites for AdSense, and normally noticed highly targeted keywords. I am also pleased with their publisher support.

You can see the ads in action at Healthy Sauna.

Here’s some of my initial results as I tested the program:

Pros:

• Appears to have no degradation of c/t for other advertising methods. This makes any income, a bonus.
• The link ads can be made to look different from normal inline links on a webpage, or almost exactly the same. The choice is yours. Making them the same will increase the c/t, but may also impact negatively on the customer experience.
• A competitor’s advertising can be blocked.
• Kontera ads can be used simultaneously with Google’s AdSense. This was verified directly through my account representative for AdSense at Google. She did stipulate that the allowance of this form of advertising is subject to change in the future.
• Kontera support will fine tune the ads appearing until a publisher is happy with the results.
• You can choose a section of the webpage for the ads to appear, otherwise, they’re liable to show up in headers, copyrights, etc. Note the locations in the diet help website, which hasn’t had its ads restricted to certain portions of the page.

Cons:

• Overall cpm rate as “advertised” by the initial contact was much lower then the actual rate has ended up being. About 1/4th of the promised cpm.
• While a competitors advertising can be blocked, it is cumbersome, requiring the publisher to go through their contact person.
• Reports are very basic.
• Ad display can be slow at times. This only has a slight impact on the page though, as the code is placed at the BOTTOM of the page… and the ads are the last thing to show.
• They tend to bunch their ads at the top of the page, in the first paragraph…. I’m not sure this is the most effective form.

I am impressed with the overall performance of this form of advertising. Publishers can expect it to increase their bottom line by at least $1 cpm for websites based heavily in content. While not a lot of money, I have not seen it negatively affect the overall earnings on any website, and have not noticed Google’s search results, or any other search results, be affected by the advertising.

In April of 2006, various milestones were reached with my web properties.

Family Tree Guide exceeded 2 million names. For any family tree website, the amount of names within it’s trees are important, as it will have a viral effect on future growth. I have consistently seen the number of people within the trees of this website grow exponentially, both by people creating new websites, and existing sites increasing their size.

We exceeded 30 new sites for 2006. While I haven’t mentioned all of them here, Judy and I have either purchased or created 30 websites in 2006, and look forward to building or buying an additional 70 more. Several of the sites we’ve built this year have already made their money back for us, and are now profitable. That’s an achievement for only 4 months!