Business 2.0: Putting Online Ads in Context

But it's not with the big guys that I see the real breakthrough. If you're a publisher with a high-quality site about, say, jazz, you can't succeed with banner ads. But you just might be able to make it on paid links for albums and trumpet lessons. Google's offering is limited to sites with large amounts of traffic, like Google Groups, Knight Ridder's newspaper sites, and Blogger.com. But soon contextual advertising will open up Overture's and Google's vast databases of advertisers to the entire universe of Web publishing. Let that soak in: This is a new revenue source for the entire Web, one that not only is unobtrusive but, because it's based on relevance, might even be useful to readers. Contextual advertising "could be much larger than the paid search market," claims Bill Demas, senior vice president at Overture. Google's Wojcicki seconds his assertion.