New Feature: Related Tags

The Infolinks Related Tags feature adds a unique In Text cloud within the content of a web page with carefully selected informational tags. These related tags are the most powerful keywords on the page and they perform similarly to In Text ads. When a visitor hovers over a tag, an Infolinks advertisement bubble appears and each click awards the publisher with additional revenues. Like with In Text ads, no space is required for this feature and no changes are made to the website layout. Here’s a first glimpse… (this image is taken from another website; to see it live, visit the In Text Ads Example Page)

Pilot Results: 30% Higher Revenues

Before offering Related Tags to its publishers, Infolinks ran it as a pilot on 200 websites selected to represent a general but varied population. Selection criteria included size, geographical area and site category. To ensure consistency, only websites with 6 months of stable earnings were allowed to participate. Data was collected and analyzed over a two months period. Comparisons were made between earnings before and after adding the Related Tags as well as the placement of the Related Tags on the web pages.

The results were surprising: not only did the Related Tags positively affect publisher earnings, it did so considerably. On average publishers who used the Related Tags feature increased their overall earnings by 30%.



In Text Position Matters

The position of the Related Tags clouds within the pages also had a substantial impact on earnings.  When the Related Tags were placed at the top part of the web page earnings increased by 35%, when placed in the middle a 20% increase and finally at the footer, a 15% increase.

A word from Infolinks: “By simply adding a small informational cloud to a website, online publishers can significantly improve the overall results. A small tweak can make a big difference. The Infolinks Related Tags feature has proven itself, it dramatically increased In Text advertising earnings and therefore we recommend In Text users to give it a try.”

A word from me: Well, it looks promising…!

Most of us use Google every day. Many times. Most of us are also aware of Global Warming. In fact, our own usage of computers – and even using Google – contributes a little to the climate deterioration. But there is an alternative search option that gives back to Earth.

MyGoodPage.com is a Google-based search engine that utilizes revenues from advertisers to Do Good, as they call it, and right now, it’s focused on planting trees. From the user’s point of view, the website looks very much like Google, and since it’s powered by Google, the search results are the same as Google. In other words, it also works like Google.

What’s the difference? As with Google search, the results include some sponsored results from advertisers who are charged per click. In the case of regular search with Google, all advertising revenues are going directly to Google. When using MyGoodPage.com, Google generously shares a part of the advertising revenues with MyGoodPage.com and these funds are directed towards planting trees and doing good in general.

MyGoodPage.com – Watch the Video

This video was taken by The Civis Mundi organization, which carried out the first planting expedition financed by MyGoodPage.com. As you can see, not only that they planted real beautiful trees, this expedition also involved educational activity to local children in South Brazil, who learn to appreciate nature and become young ambassadors for forest preservation.

What Can I Do to Help?

Simply, use MyGoodPage.com as your default search engine. In fact, many people already use it today as their homepage and the website is ranked by Alexa as one of the top 150,000 sites in the world. If you need help doing this, visit the Join page here.

You can also help spreading the word about this project by telling about it to others and posting about it in your blog, Facebook page or Twitter; learn more about this here – Spread the Word.

Disclosure: In Text Ads that Plant Trees

Infolinks and I are highly involved in the MyGoodPage.com project. Instead of sufficing with financing its initial operations by donating money, Infolinks engaged its network of website publishers in this social responsibility project by donating In Text advertising campaigns to raise awareness to MyGoodPage.com and direct potential green searchers to the website. Click on the following link to learn more about how Infolinks goes Green.

Have you ever hovered over an in text ad double underline link only to find a bubble that offers to search more information about the highlighted term? This is a Search Bubble. When clicking on a search bubble, the visitor is lead to a landing page with search results for that certain highlighted term. Clearly, this is not exactly an advertisement, because the visitor is only offered search results and not more related content from an advertiser. But you do see quite a lot of these search bubbles among other in text ads… Where are they coming from? And more importantly, who pays for them?

Paying for Search

The publishers do get paid per click even when the in text bubble only contains a search link. In most cases, the advertiser is the search engine itself. In an online world dominated by Google, smaller search engines and niche search engines are forced to buy search traffic. In other words, to promote their search services, they pay for people to use them for search.

A good example for this is Microsoft’s Bing search engine. A relatively new comer with clear intentions to win market share over from Google, Bing is paying for campaigns to promote searches, trying to get people to appreciate their services and come back for more searches. Another example can be business directories or specialized niche search engines, which pay for initial searches, hoping for returning users later on.

This way, the in text ads network places search bubbles, but in fact, these are actual ads paid for by the target search engine. Therefore, in the eyes of the publishers, these are regular ads with standard pay per click model, while for the visitors of the websites, these ads simply offer more information in the format of search results.

Paid for Search Results

In addition to the search bubbles financed by the target search engines, sometimes the search bubble leads to search results that contain paid for results. The business model here is based on the potential revenues from visitors who click on the sponsored results.

Let’s clarify this with an example. Joe is looking for information about a certain disease through Google. He gets to a website with information about this disease and one of the possible treatments is highlighted with double underline as an in text ad. Upon a mouse hover, the opening bubble offers Joe to search more information about this treatment using a health related search engine. After he clicks, he lands on the health related search engine’s results page. These results are relevant to his search and he’s happy. He clicks on one of them from a local clinic that offers that treatment and becomes a lead for that clinic, a potential customer. The health related search engine paid 20 cents for that click. The in text ads network kept 30% of it, and paid the remaining 14 cents to the original publisher, which makes them both happy. Now, the health related search engine specializes in health clinics and was able to sell that ad to a local clinic for 70 cents. Again, both the search engine and the clinic are happy. The clinic for purchasing a valid lead for a price it was willing to pay, and the search engine for earning the difference between prices, in this case – 50 cents.

Search bubbles are sometimes condemned for being a tool for traffic arbitrage – publishers who buy cheap traffic in the form of run-of-network (RON) campaigns and transform it into revenues from higher paying ads. However, as shown in the example above, when handled correctly, all participants can be very happy with it. From the original website and visitor, through the in text ads network, and all the way to the search engines and their advertisers – all involved sides managed to earn from the transaction that got the potential customer and clinic in contact. And who knows, perhaps that in text search bubble would get Joe healthier.

Shopping Comparison Bubbles

One type of in text search bubbles is purchased by shopping comparison websites. While a publisher could get paid a little more for displaying an advertisement from the final online retailer, many online shoppers prefer going through a shopping comparison website that offers reviews of the product and price offers from different online retailers together with reviews of the retailers themselves.

This preference has lead to in text ads with shopping comparison search bubbles. Upon a mouse hover over a double underline link, mostly of a highlighted name of a product, the opened bubble will offer the visitor shopping comparison for that specific product. The target landing page will present the visitor with shopping alternatives and reviews. Due to the nature of in text ads that require the active permission of the visitor, shopping comparison websites find high conversion rates from such ads that bring visitors with good chances of purchase, which explains why they are willing to pay per click. Again, all sides are happy, from the publisher who got paid for the click, through the network and shopping comparison website, and on to the online retailer at the end of the line that gets a lead that has actively chosen to get there with high potential of purchase.

Happy People

So, the next time you see an in text ad with a search box inside it, either from a general search engine or from a niche information provider like a shopping comparison website, you can smile. True, this is not exactly an ad, but when managed correctly by the in text ads network, it creates a cycle of happy people.

In text advertising comes in many formats. The original and most recognized format for the hooks – the highlighted terms which carry the ad bubble – is the double underline. But there are other formats that could be more suitable for your website and it’s important to know the differences.

I already wrote a tip relevant to this topic: use a distinct format for in text ads. In text ads should be subtle enough not to interrupt uninterested readers, and yet they should send a clear signal to readers informing them about available additional information. Using a distinct format assists your visitors in determining whether or not they are interested in the advertisers’ content. Informed readers lead to clicks based on permission which in the long run helps achieving higher revenues from happy advertisers.

The double underline format has been in use as default by leading in text ads networks and with time has become the industry’s standard. Readers already recognize double underline links as standing for in text ads and they can make their choice: keep on reading uninterrupted, or hover with the mouse to learn more before they decide if they want to click on the advertisement. The double underline format is not in common use for anything else, which makes it a distinct and preferred format for in text ads.

The Evil Alternative: Single Underline Ad Links

In the earlier days of in text advertising, publishers where offered to set the ad links to appear with the regular single underline format. The justification was that readers complained that the then new double underline links were disturbing their reading. Consequently, readers where then clicking on the ad links without knowing that they lead to advertising landing pages instead of additional non-paid-for content. I call this the Evil Alternative because it contradicts the idea of permission marketing. When visitors are fooled into clicking, they tend to get angry and quickly leave both the advertiser’s landing page and the original website. Despite the short run increase in click through rate (CTR), after a short while the revenues from such ad links would drop as a result of advertisers refusing to work with a website that has high bounce rates. No advertiser wants to pay high pay per click sums for unintended clicks.

To avoid this unwanted result, the in text ad networks had to set single underline in text ads to require two clicks. The first click would only open the bubble – without charge to the advertiser and without payment to the website’s publisher. Only the second click, after the ad was opened within the bubble, would be counted for charges and payments. Although this was better than the unintended clicks, with this double click requirement, the number of paid for clicks decreased substantially and readers found the confusion between regular links and ad links quite annoying. Bottom line is that using the single underline format for in text ads on a website is in fact the evil alternative and it is not recommended.

The Positive Alternative: Other Distinct Underline Formats

Positive Alternative is a nice rhyme which already makes it interesting. Some website publishers simply don’t like the standard double underline format. They feel it doesn’t go well with their website’s design or that their visitors either disregard them or dislike them. While keeping the best practice of using a distinct format for ad links, they still wanted other graphical formats. And the ad networks agreed. Hence the dashed, zigzag or combined underline formats were thrown into the online advertising ring.

Instead of the standard double underline format, publishers can now choose other link formats that are still clear enough as being different than the regular hyperlinks. Ad links can be formatted as a dashed underline, a zigzag underline, or any combination thereof. In fact, they can come in many other graphical appearances as well. As long as readers understand that they are different than regular links, this works quite well. It should be noted that new visitors would not recognize the in text ads as such, since these formats are not the industry’s standard which they recognize from other websites. This usually means a higher rate of hovers and then clicks, which explains why this is the Positive Alternative. But then again, it may also annoy the visitors a little as a new type of interruption.

Bonus: Icons Next to In Text Ads

In the spirit of the search for balance between making the in text ads stand out and not interfering with the flow of reading, there is another bonus option: adding a small icon next to the highlighted term. Some of the leading in text ads networks allow publishers to insert a small icon next to the ad link. This icon can be anything from a tiny bubble symbol that signals to readers that there is a bubble waiting for them upon a hover, and on to an icon which is relevant to the ad’s content. For example, a tiny magnifying glass icon when the bubble only contains further search options. Adding such an icon may prove to be exactly what your visitors are looking for – a distinct format that helps them identify which link is a regular hyperlink and which link is in fact a paid for advertisement. However, some visitors find these icons to be a little too much for them when added within text.

Best Practice: Try and Try Again

With all these options of formats for in text ad links, the best practice would be to conduct some testing. You may start with the default of double underline links and then, after you have accumulated enough information, test the results with other formats like the dashed underline and adding an icon next to the links. You should monitor both the bottom line results and your visitors’ feedback until you find the balance best suited for your website. And then, after a while, you should probably run some further testing. That’s how it is with website monetization, the optimization process is ongoing. But it’s also fun.

In the early days of in text advertising, the double underline links opened bubbles with textual ads, mostly alongside a thumbnail image of the ad’s landing page as a preview. With time, the text ads gave way to more and more graphic ads that looked more like the regular banners. This trend is still in progress and the balance between text ads and banner ads is not fixed yet. In fact, this balance is very different between markets and it seems that in markets where in text ads are still relatively new, text ads still hold the reigns, while in more mature markets, banners are taking the lead.

Placing display ads within the bubbles is not a technological challenge. The bubbles can come in different sizes matching the standard banner dimensions, and running an animated banner or playing video is simply importing a different object into that location. So, if it’s really that simple, why aren’t all in text ads graphic, and why do they mostly start with text ads?

Ad Relevance and Noise Balance

The first aspect that makes in text ads so attractive to publishers who respect their content is that they are subtle and don’t add as much jumble as the graphic banners. In an attempt to keep the noise balance in favor of the actual content, in text ads can be relatively quiet. When the bubbles themselves are filled with flashy banners, the in text ads lose this advantage.

The second benefit of in text ads is that they are attached to specific terms within the content offering potential for high levels of contextual matching. When the ads are relevant, the visitors value them and in return, the advertisers gain real attention. This of course leads to higher revenues to the publishers with less annoyance to their visitors. By definition, it’s easier to match text ads to specific terms than it is with banners, which tend to be less specific. While it’s true that banners can be made more specific, in reality, they are not as contextual as text ads.

Why do Display Ads Win?

In light of the ad relevance and noise balance advantages of text ads over banners, why is it so that display ads take more and more bubble-share from in text ads? The answer is in permission marketing and the business model. Clearly, upon an intended mouse hover, when the bubble is opened, graphic elements may attract more attention and deliver a deeper message than a few words. And it’s exactly attention that advertisers seek from potential customers, aiming to achieve the gold trophy of real permission marketing. Now, when advertisers buy regular display campaigns, they’re counting on the banners to be placed next to the content, interfering the visitors in their interest in the content. As such, the level of expected attention is relatively low and consequently, the price per view is also low, because most visitors would pay very little attention.

Banners within in text ads are different. They are not placed and exposed unless the visitor expresses active interest in learning more about a highlighted term, and therefore the attention level is very high, especially when compared to a banner that is simply there, surrounding the content. This permission from the visitor to get exposed to the advertisement is highly valuable to advertisers.

And then comes the business model. While text ads are mostly charged per click, when financing a display campaign, the advertiser usually pays for impressions only. Clicks are just a bonus. And the price is set by the thousands of page views. The price of each such view is low, again, because in most of these page views the banner will get very little attention, if any. Each view usually costs fractions of a cent. But then, if the same campaign is placed within in text ads, each delivery receives direct, permitted attention. It’s a whole different story. But while the increase in attention can be enormous, the added cost is usually not as high, and advertisers can get a very good deal.

Therefore, from the advertiser’s point of view, placing display ads within the in text bubbles can prove to be very rewarding. In cases where the publishers agree to the higher level of noise and lower levels of relevancy, they too get rewarded in higher effective revenues. They also benefit from the fact that they are being paid for hovers – each time a visitor hovers with the mouse over an ad, the banner is displayed and counted – and therefore publishers get paid for visitors who haven’t necessarily clicked and left their website.

The Metrics Challenge

Integrating display campaigns into in text advertising methods holds a challenge in the form of distorted metrics. Since the banners get much more attention than they would have received outside of the bubble, they also get a much higher click through rate. When such campaigns run through widely accepted ad serving services or marketplaces, the metrics seem to be off the standard and almost fraudulent. With time, ad servers and marketplaces learn the special characteristics of in text ads and handle them correctly. But until this process is finalized, in text placing is often flagged as problematic and the provider needs to sort this out with the intermediaries.

Video In Text Ads

All this is true for video in text ads as well. A video played within the bubble is noisy but it has a strong appeal and often wins over the visitor’s attention. Again, there is a challenge with the metrics and the business model may need adjustments, but the potential is high for both advertisers and publishers.

There’s a Big Market Out There

Last but not least, display ads simply have a larger available market. While the text ads market is mostly controlled by Google which is still out of the in text arena, the market for display ads is more evenly shared among other ad networks who do work with in text advertisers. This means that the big display ads market is open for in text players and holds a great potential. This big display and video market out there explains why we see – and will continue to see – more and more banners within in text bubbles.

When defining in-text ads, the little tooltip that opens upon a mouse hover nicknamed “bubble” was a fundamental part of it. But, as it usually happens with definitions, there are exceptions. Some advertising methods that insert ads dynamically within existing online content do so without the so called bubble, or with variations of it.

Generally speaking, I find the bubbles to be a crucial part of the success of in text advertising. The ability of the users to view the ad before clicking it guarantees the double permission process – when hovering with the mouse, users first ask for some more information about the highlighted term (with the double underline), and then when they click they actually approve that they want to see more of the related ad shown within the bubble. Such genuine interest in advertised content generates higher conversion rates for the advertisers and in the long run yields higher revenues to the website publisher. Without this preview, more clicks will be by mistake, bounce rates will be higher and overall results for both advertisers and publishers will diminish. And yet, such bubble-less in text ads do exist, so they’re worth understanding.

Link Only In Text Ads

Some providers offer website publishers to integrate what seems like in text ads that do not react to mouse hovers. Upon a click such ads lead to the advertiser’s landing page without a bubble or other form of preview. In most cases, such providers also allow the configuration of the advertising links to confusingly appear exactly like regular hyperlinks.

The obvious outcome of these link-only in text ads is unaware clicks. Visitors to sites with such ads can’t differentiate regular or editorial links from the paid for links. The unavoidable result is that users get confused. They also get angry and this anger is directed at both the website and the advertiser.

So why would anyone integrate such ads? From the publisher’s point of view, misleading visitors makes sense only for websites that don’t view their visitors as anything else than onetime short term revenue opportunities. Websites that don’t look for returning visitors, like AdSense traps or websites that deal with traffic arbitrage, simply want clicks for immediate revenues, not much more. Some get-rich-quick programs that promote such websites may be candidates for this form of advertising.

But with this understanding, why would advertisers want to work with them? Well, there are many types of advertisers that look for volume with no focus on quality. Again, traffic arbitrage sometimes requires high volumes of clicks, some fraudulent activities may require disguising robot clicks among genuine clicks, and you can think of other examples, but they will all surely fall under dubious fields of online activity. As you can see, I personally don’t like it when people are cheated or misled into clicking and therefore, I don’t like link-only in text ads.

Animated and Interactive Tooltips

The nicer version of bubble-less in text ads is when the regular bubble is replaced by another form of creative preview. Instead of placing the ad within a bubble like tooltip, some in text ads use other formats that on the one hand generate the double permission process, but on the other hand attract much more attention. One example is 3D ads that pop upon a hover. Another example is rather big bubbles that include interactive content.

While such creative bubble replacements could prove to be very efficient, they do have a down side in the form of noise. One of the nicest advantages of in text ads is that they are subtle, and while they do hook themselves on actual content, they don’t overdo this with jumping animation. This is the secret that helped pave the route of in text ads into reputable websites. Adding interactive or large animated bubbles could prove to be efficient, but it changes the balance of content and ads, so it may not be suitable for all kinds of websites.

Added Text Link Ads and Google Text Link Ad Units

The last form of bubble-less in text ads – at least for the time being – comes in the form of added links. This method of advertising steps even further away from in text advertising since it does not highlight existing content, but instead it inserts additional content within the text. This can be done either by configuring text ad units within the content, where ads are later added dynamically, or even by letting a script push the content to add textual ad units. Then, these text links can perform as regular in text ads with hovers and bubbles, or as link-only text ads with no preview.

The most famous example is Google AdSense’s Text Link ad units, where publishers can add a line of text links with contextually related terms that link to pages full of paid for ads. Many website publishers integrate these ad units just above content to appear a little like a navigation bar, which clearly confuses visitors. Others add these text link ad units between paragraphs to appear as part of the text. One should question Google’s approval of these ads which stand in contradiction to Google’s general positive approach to online advertising. My guess is that with time, Google will back away from this format or at least restrict the integration to locations which will not be confusing.

Added text link ads could be legitimate and serve visitors with added value while creating a positive interaction opportunity for advertisers only when they are clearly distinct from the content. To Google’s benefit it should be said that all text link ad units are preceded by a small headline describing them as ads. As with other issues related to contextual advertising, the clearer the distinction between editorial content and ads, the better are the long term results for all sides involved. So, if you do choose to use bubble-less in text ads, do keep distinction in mind.

They look like in-text ads with double underline links and a bubble that opens upon a mouse hover, but their content is different. Instead of commercial content from an advertiser, the bubble offers additional content from various sources. They are informational links.

The offered related content can be in the form of links to potentially relevant pages from the same website or from other websites. Sometimes, and mostly when the content is originated in another free website like Wikipedia or YouTube, the content can be made available within the bubble itself, so the users won’t be tempted to leave the website. One of the pioneers of related content in text links, Snap, focuses on the end user’s experience and describes them as a “way to give your users a more fun and interactive experience on your site or blog.”

Where’s the Business Model?

The initial problem with related content in text links was the lack of a business model. True, some website publishers found such tools to increase page views through internal linking, but these dynamic links were not counted for SEO, so they lost popularity. Also true, some websites liked the idea that Wikipedia and YouTube content, which users look for anyway, is made available within their websites, so they don’t lose the visitors, but such rich content bubbles add a lot of noise to the website’s design.

So, like it often happens, it all came down to finding a justifiable business model. Someone had to pay for the added bubbles. The problem was that the websites’ publishers were hoping to earn from such services running on their websites, and not pay for them. And Wikipedia and YouTube most certainly wouldn’t pay for this offsite distribution.

And then, in the lack of another business model, related content in text links shifted towards regular forms of in text advertising and started including paid-for content within the so-called objective related content. On one hand, services like Snap started adding advertising to the offered content, while on the other hand, in text providers began adding non-commercial content alongside the ads within their bubbles. This way, the advertising revenues financed the free service of the related content.

A Hybrid is Born – In Text Ads Plus Related Content

A new form of in text links was born – the Hybrid. Such hybrid in text links combine both seemingly objective related information and paid-for advertising content. While this could have been a nice way to pave new paths into the hearts of more conservative publishers, through showing off with the added value to the end users while explaining the ads as a financial must, I find it to be highly problematic, to say the least.

The Problem with Related Content In Text Links

As discussed previously, one the most attractive aspects of in text advertising in the eyes of the advertisers, is the fact that users grant their permission to get exposed to the ad’s content. Users show active interest by hovering with the mouse and then clicking, and by doing so, they bring with them the promise of genuine attention – the highest prize for an advertiser.

When in text ads are mixed with informational links, the visitors are deprived of the ability to easily identify which is which. The website’s visitors mistakenly hover or click on ads while hoping to get seemingly non-commercial content, and vice versa. While in the short term this could increase the click through rate, on the longer term, this mixture significantly decreases the effectiveness of in text advertising. The more distinct the double underline links are, the higher the conversion levels are, and with it the higher the CPC to the publisher and the satisfaction to the advertiser. And the opposite is also true. The higher the confusion between informational links and advertising links is, the lower the results would be for both publishers and advertisers.

Best Practices: Distinction

This analysis doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for informational in text links. Related content in text links could in fact add some page views and, in some cases, contribute to the overall user experience. However, to keep both visitors and advertisers happy, there should be a clear distinction between the types of links. And when we’re looking for best practices, the distinction should be very clear…! If the links have the same appearance, but the shade of color is a bit off, this doesn’t count for distinction. Visitors need to clearly understand what they’re hovering over – an informational link or an in text ad. Once they do, they will be happier and eventually so will the advertisers and publishers.