ContextWeb and Online Text Exchange, the folks behind a study we reported on back in October that demonstrated context at the page level improved ad performance over contextual matching at the site level (e.g. an ads for computers will perform better on a news site article on computers than it does in a general article in a computer-themed site), have released the results of another study that show more or less the same thing.

This time, the test was on skin-care products instead of computers. But the results point to the same finding: context matters. Branded recognition from the ad enjoyed double-digit improvement when they were shown on a skincare page or on a skincare site, than on a page unrelated to skincare.

What’s important to note from both studies is that context will work equally well at the page level. This means that a publisher does not have to build an entire site around the ad’s vertical—a page on the topic will perform at least as well. (Although driving traffic is an entirely different matter…)

 Attention! Paul Edmondson, CEO of YieldBuild, will be speaking at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, Thursday, April 24, at 11 am: Maximizing Ad Revenue Through Format Optimization. Be sure to mark your calendars!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.