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 Do note that these limitations could be outdated because I’ve read that some Australian, European and Indian publishers have been accepted into their network as well.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.