One form of advertising that is seen occasionally, but has never fully taken off, is in-text contextual advertisements. Google already offers contextual advertisements in the form of AdSense. Through this service, Google looks at the contents of a page and then matches it to relevant advertisers. Currently, it comes in the form of ads blocks or links which are displayed on the page.
However, this is not the only form of contextual advertising available. In-text contextual advertising, also known as content linking or contextual linking, is the linking of keywords or phrases within copy to relevant advertisers based on the keywords.
Here's an example from our own homepage:
There are few companies that offer such advertising, but most are associated with scumware - a duplicitous device that plagues web users worldwide. The user downloads software while a sneaky program installs itself and links words on pages to its advertisers.
There is also a form of contextual advertising that is seen as unethical by many search engines - this occurs when a user signs up with a network, pays a fee and is then awarded a contextual link to their website within a possibly unrelated page with the intent of using such links to gain search engine rankings - e.g. the link was not generated on merit, but rather on money.
In-text contextual linking can be used in an ethical and potentially profitable way and the innovators at Google may wish to consider adding another string to the company's bow either by buying a company or developing the technique themselves.
This could be a relatively simple process. A webmaster could sign up and place a piece of JavaScript on the page, thus allowing Google to scan and highlight words.
Advertisers could sign up and then, in a process similar to that utilised by AdSense, use such links to drive traffic to their site for a fee. The webmaster would then also get a cut of the fee based on the number of clicks or impressions. This could all be done via JavaScript, resulting in no passing of link value so the scheme remains ethical.
High quality blogs that currently receive a lot of exposure would be an ideal venue for advertisers to tap into this form of marketing. Many advertisers don't feel this method appeals to them at the moment, as the links are not clearly marked as advertisements. However, this is an area that Google could explore and in which it could clearly define the process to make it easy for advertisers to see the potential benefits.
Such forms of marketing would also be ideal for affiliates trying to promote their merchants' websites. Affiliates often use blogs to drive traffic to merchants - for example, writing product reviews and then linking keywords to the merchant's site. And since Google owns an affiliate network, the creation of in-text contextual advertising could be upon us in the near future.
