Text Advertising

Text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific keywords within the text of a web-page are matched with advertising and/or related information units. Although Text advertising in general refers to the inclusion of advertisements adjacent to relevant online context in-text advertising places hyperlinks directly into the text of the webpage. In text advertising works on a cost per click (CPC) model, which means that each time a website visitor clicks on an In-text ad, the websites owner gets paid by the advertiser.

The use of text advertising in news and journalism websites has been criticized by journalism ethics counselors as "ethically problematic at the least and potentially quite corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility." However, publishers such as the Indianapolis Star who use in-text advertising have reported that despite early objections by some readers, such complaints have "tapered off".

Text-based ads, although common in email, have been dominated on the Web by their graphical-based counterparts. Affiliate marketing is one area where text ads have flourished. However, many mainstream advertisers are only beginning to discover the power of text. Google has caused a buzz with its text advertising options, generating a self-proclaimed "click-through rate 4-5 times higher than industry standard for banner ads."While lacking some of the advantages of graphical ads, text-based ads have some powerful advantages of their own. They download almost instantly and are not affected by ad blocking software.