Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is a form of advertising on websites. Advertisements are presented based on the similarity between the ad and the content of the page it is being shown on.

Contextual advertising benefits both the advertiser and the owner of the web site where the ad appears. Search engines place ads on various web sites within their advertising network and then pay dividends to the web site owner when users click ads placed in their web sites. Contextual ads are distributed through the search engines, or advertising networks. If the user is looking at a finance website, and the site uses contextual advertising, the user will see ads for finance-related companies. Fraud is mitigated by the use of sophisticated programs that analyse the traffic clicking on the ads.