A Review of Kontera – Monetize your website with Contextual In Text Advertising

I recently started using Kontera on Dosh Dosh a few days ago and some of you might have noticed the cute little ad boxes that show up when you hover over certain links. Kontera is a contextual advertising network that offers In Text advertising based on keywords within a body of text.
Known as ContentLink, these specific words are double underlined and will reveal small bubble like boxes with an advert, whenever you move your mouse cursor over them. Clicking on the text in the ad will take you to the advertiser’s web page.
Here are some screenshots of Kontera in action on Dosh Dosh.


How does Kontera work?
Kontera is an In-Text advertising solution that automatically converts specific keywords on your website into monetized links. You’ll simply need to install a script on every page of your website and several words per page will be transformed into links with bubble box advertisements. Like Adsense, you’ll earn money according to both Cost-Per-Impression and Cost-per-Click.
According to their website, Kontera currently only works for publishers in USA, Canada and UK. Do note that these limitations could be outdated because I’ve read that some Australian, European and Indian publishers have been accepted into their network as well. I would suggest emailing Kontera or just signing up to check if your application will be approved.
Why should I use Kontera?
Kontera doesn’t conflict with Google Adsense, an advertising network that you are probably already running on your website. This means that you can use Kontera alongside Adsense, which gives you another way to monetize your website. Kontera is also a reliable option for webmasters who do not like to use blocks of Adsense-style contextual ads on their website.
Several publishers using both Adsense and Kontera have indicated that they have not experienced any drops in CTR for Adsense, so it’s possible that using Kontera will not have a negative effect on your integrated Adsense ads.
While this has been the experience of most publishers using Kontera, your mileage may vary depending on factors such as ad placement, site design, content type as well as keyword density.
What qualifications do I need to be accepted as a publisher?
According to Kontera, your website should have more than 500,000 page impressions per month and must be rich in textual content. Your site must also be in English and must not cover subjects like pornography and other illegal activities.
The largest barrier of entry is obviously, the page impressions prerequisite. Most smaller blogs do not meet that requirement so using Kontera was originally next to impossible. However, I recently came across news that Kontera is currently opening up its doors to publishers with smaller traffic levels.

Dosh Dosh’s Review of Kontera
In-text advertising will work best with websites that have a lot of textual content and traffic. Like Adsense, your earning potential is largely dependent on how much you traffic you get.
I’ve used Kontera for a few days and like many publishers, have noticed that Kontera did not adversely affect the CTR for Adsense. I’m earning an extra 20% of my usual ad income, which is very nice because I decided not to fully optimize Adsense for Dosh Dosh at this point in time.
Examples of Publisher Stats and figures on Kontera
I would say that the most important factor when it comes to making money with Kontera is traffic. Higher traffic will inevitably lead to stronger CTR and earnings. Traffic will also compensate for the possibility of getting low paying keywords which can give you less than $0.07 per click.
I’ve collected some general figures from various publishers who participated in a specific Digital Point forum thread. Here are some general ad earnings and rates that were reported by some publishers using Kontera.

$30.20 from 6063 impressions and 295 clicks $18.88 from 5374 impressions / 218 clicks $110.0 from 6,003 imp / 1270 clicks $0.34 from 115 impressions / 7 clicks

Since setting up Kontera a few days ago, I’ve gotten a 2.75% CTR and have averaged around $0.20 per click, while my Effective CPM remained around $5.41 for each 1000 impressions, which I think is pretty decent. Note that this will of course vary, depending on your site content and traffic levels. The payout rate for Kontera is currently set at $100, which can be reasonable when you have a strong website that receives lots of visitors daily.
Will Kontera have a negative impact on my content?
I did find Kontera to be a little obtrusive. Some publishers may find that In-text advertising might devalue the worth of their content because they interrupt the experience of the general reader. I think this will depend on what type of website you own.
Professional or political websites will seem a little silly running Kontera, especially when the advertisements are poorly targeted. Video, humor or Tech websites and blogs should do comparably better with Kontera because of the lighter topic focus and stronger product-based targeting.

Kontera Review – Final Thoughts.
Here’s a summary of what most publishers have mentioned about Kontera. Some of the points come from my brief experience of using Kontera on Dosh Dosh.
What’s Cool.

• Efficient and personal customer support.
• Legitimate. Kontera pays on time.
• CPM rates are negotiable if your site attracts significant traffic
• Very easy to install. Only takes a few minutes to set up the code.

What’s Not

• No real time stats – reporting is 1 day behind.
• Advertising may not be targeted. Some manual tweaking needed.
• Doesn’t work in Firefox. I can’t see Kontera ads when I’m running FF. Anyone verify this?
• Kontera script slows down loading time for webpages.
• In Text advertising may detract from content.

Verdict
I think that Kontera complements Adsense pretty well and can be an additional and effective way of monetizing your website. The main issue is that the inline pop-up links can irritate your visitors who might not like the pop-ups that show up when they hover over a link.
Another important issue at hand is to confirm if Kontera monopolizes your Adsense clicks.
Did your CTR go down? Did you get a higher or lower average cost per click for Kontera than Adsense? How do your site visitors or blog readers react to Kontera’s in text ads?
You could probably run some heat map or tracking tests to find out how your visitors interact with the ads and determine if they should be part of your site’s long term monetization strategy.
I don’t think Kontera will cause any negative repercussions to your existing ad programs, but then again the best way to find out is to simply sign up with Kontera and carefully monitor the results.

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Thoughts on Contextual Advertising: Site Building, Monetization and Ethics

Jeremy Schoemaker aka Shoemoney and the owner of this famous Adsense check has put up a nice little video about his presentation at the recent 2007 New York Search Engine Strategies Conference.
Part of a panel on contextual advertising which included Jennifer Slegg, Jeremy’s presentation was mainly centered around his personal experiences on making money with contextual ad programs like Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network.
The video in question was 27 mins long video and was a brief introduction to contextual advertising, primarily from a publisher’s perspective. I took some notes on Shoemoney’s suggestions and made a short list of the key points:

• Build a site and develop strong user functionality for your site before thinking about monetization.
• You should at have at least 1,000 daily visitors before throwing up Adsense ads on your website. Before you reach that traffic level, the key emphasis should be on building critical mass.
• Good points about contextual advertising: It allows one to avoid the headache of looking for direct advertisers and chasing after payments.
• Negative points about contextual advertising: Lack of editorial control over the type of ads that are displayed. Adsense ads might contrast greatly with the content on your website. Users might associate Adsense ads as recommendations from your website. (E.G. Ads for puppy mills on a quality dog breeding website.)
• Another negative about contextual advertising is that to earn money, your visitors have to click away from your site. You might lose users who might not come back again to your site.

And there’s some more stuff on Adsense Arbitrage and publisher compliance. A full text copy of the panel on making money with contextual ads can be found at SEO RoundTable. There’s some great Adsense tips from Jennifer Slegg as well, so be sure to check that out.
Contextual Advertising on Blogs: Balancing Profit Motives and Long-Term Goals
One of the points that Jeremy mentioned was similar to my confession that monetizing too early was one of the biggest blogging mistakes I’ve made.
Contextual advertising is profitable only if you have a consistent and large traffic flow to your website. Even if your ads are perfectly optimized and blended, you won’t make much money if only a few hundred people visit your site daily.
Why aggravate visitors and push the profit issue when it’s evident that traffic and audience building should be of primary importance? Alternatively, ask yourself this question:
Would you rather earn $4 a day everyday for the next 3 months or would you want to forgo the minuscule monetary incentive and focus 100% on building defensive and search traffic, which has the potential of exploding your ad earnings?
If you’re seriously interested in gaining a large reader base or making money from blogging, understand that monetization is a gradual process that comes after site and traffic building.
Contextual advertising is also not the only solution. Monetize with different methods according to traffic levels and site growth. Most of all, focus on long-term development and overall site growth instead of short-term benefits.
This is doubly important when you don’t own several websites and only have one flagship site that is your main money-maker.
Contextual Ads Relevancy and Niche Branding/Site Objective
To the web savvy surfer, adsense ads are seen as different from actual editorial content on a blog or website. These users won’t think that the Adsense units are personal recommendations from the site owners.
However, some other visitors might mentally associate the contextual ads they see with the general content on this blog. Herein lies a dilemma that was on the mind in the last few weeks.
One of my goals was to always to make money through Adsense but I soon realized that giving up prime ad space on Dosh Dosh to contextual ads on eBook, affiliate or MLM scams is not really my cup of tea.
The hypocrisy bothered me. While I righteously blog about monetization strategies and traffic building, a get-rich quick ad unit silently refutes what I say by offering empty promises of instant monetary gratification and long term financial success.
Can I still bitch about evil eBook scams, while my site has its real estate overrun by ads that promote such products?
Dosh Dosh is a tiny dot on the world wide web which belongs to me and taking editorial responsibility for whatever shows up on it is an important criteria for gaining user/visitor trust.
The site’s purported motive is also of primary importance. If Dosh Dosh is all about ‘helping you to make money online‘, it’s raison d’entre is to perform that duty at all cost or risk losing its niche identity. Putting ads which claim to help you get rich quick while not actually doing so runs contrary to the motive or identity of this site.
On the opposite end, running Adsense on sites with little content (proxies, parked domains etc.) or weakly branded sites with a very general and wide range of topics means a lesser risk of going against your site’s mission statement or content focus.
Then again, a lot also depends on how you optimize your site to make sure that there is the highest relevancy possible. This includes making your articles keyword dense while choosing the right page titles/meta tags etc.
An important point to remember is that contextual ad relevancy can negatively impact your site’s identity in the eyes of new visitors. This is probably another reason why going ad-free during the site-building process can be very helpful for longterm growth prospects.

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