There is a good look at the Pros and Cons of Contextual Advertising over at Online Journalism Review today. Here’s a couple of snippets.

As a veteran of last year’s San Jose SES, I certainly understand the benefit of conferences when it comes to everything related to search engines including; marketing, optimization, link strategies, and so on. The amount of insider knowledge you are privy to can be incredibly valuable.

Mention Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and two words come to mind – Volume and Exposure. Something every business needs to create a steady stream of income.

No, this baby boom will certainly not swamp the Social Security system (sort of a bad joke for those that live in the United States, but many other countries…most notably Japan…have an even more acute problem), but this baby boom is revolutionizing the way that pay per click advertising is being spread across the Internet.

Reader Question: I am confused about breadcrumb links both from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective and a usability perspective. Usability experts often say not to use them, but a lot of SEO experts recommend using them. So who is right? Should I use them or shouldn’t I?

From time to time I post jobs here. We have a couple openings in our contextual search group.

I keep reading all these speculative posts about Yahoo getting into the contextual advertising game …

Contextual Advertising is, by definition, text-based advertising. As opposed to search engine results which show up when a user types in a specific request, contextual ads appear alongside text on all websites that opt to show them.

Reader Question: I have newsletter articles and a forum on my Web site. Since I often have focused content on these pages, I thought that contextual ads might be a good way to supplement income from my site. Is this a good idea? What types of contextual advertising programs are available?

The new Yahoo contextual search feature [dubbed Y!Q] rocks! It’s like vivisimo without all the annoying crap getting in the way of your search and there’s no flash to bog down your pc. Clean and simple interface that doesn’t require any downloads and allows you to drill down into search results in an easy to use manner.

There was lots of search engine news this week. There’s news about Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and much more.

Danny Sullivan has a summary of his recent keynote at SES Chicago. One interesting thought he has…

The business model is both basic and complex at the same time. Google and Overture can make your paid-ads appear on multiple web properties if those web properties contain keywords relating to your ad.

If online advertising had fads, contextual ads would be the latest “in thing.” Also known as “content targeting,” they seem to be “popping up” (no pun intended) all over the Web. From news sites to privately owned websites, everyone and his brother seems to be dipping his “toe in the water.”

In the late 90s, web publishers were riding high with banner ads. Payouts were great, and many web owners actually saw their dream of sitting on a beach sipping tequila nearly realized.

Crystal Semantics is set to revolutionize the world of online contextual advertising with the launch of Textonomy Advance.

A study conducted by Nielsen//Netratings and IAB has found that high-ranking advertisements on SERPs can be an effective tool for branding products. IAB commissioned N//N to conduct the survey, called the Internet Search Brand Effectiveness Research.

Kanoodle has now jumped feet first into the contextual ad market with their latest offering, dubbed “Context Target.” With Context Target, your ads are placed along side of high quality related editorial content.This is similar to Google’s Adsense Program or Overture’s Content Match.

Tacoda Systems and aQuantive, Inc. have decided to throw their respective hats into the lucrative contextual ad industry. The difference that these companies offer is that they are behaviorally targeting their ads. In other words, the companies are directly targeting users, not just web pages.

I just read something about how the next big web thing doesn’t live up to it’s expectations. This next big web thing turns out to be contextual ads. After reading about this, it got me to think… What would I do?? If I was looking for a particular rock for my rock collection, what would I do? How would I go about searching for such an item? And with in my search, would I ever click on a link from a contextual ad? I thought these questions and finding the answer to them would help me make a clearer decision as to “the next big web thing” and if it really is a flop.

The role of a trusted third party to handle the complexities of affiliate marketing is a hotly contested market niche on the web. The players range from very large and complex (like LinkShare and beFree) to small programs for small business like MyAffiliateProgram.com & even affiliate tracking built into simple shopping cart software such as 1ShoppingCart.com.