Advertising on the web has revived itself again. At the time of Internet’s Boom, it was believed that the best way to get people to click on your ads is to make them graphical. However, it has now been found by modern ad companies such as Google’s AdSense that text ads are equally effective.

How does a Text Ad Look?
A text ad looks just like any simple link and consist of the headline, text and link.

An example of a typical ad is:

Buy My Stuff
I have stuff to sell to you. Come buy it.
www.example.com/stuff

These ads are generally seen in a group of 2 or 3 ads together. These ads are followed by a message from the publisher of this ads. Some text ads consists only the link without any headline and text.

Text don’t annoy anyone
Text ads are quite sophisticated, as they do nothing irritating like opening a new window, animating, make noise and the like. In fact, their simplicity is their strength. People often tend to pay more attention to ads that offers them a useful link as compared to one that actually looks like an ad. Text ads also help to earn more revenue from click-throughs. Another advantage is that they occupy less space and are more effective.

Low Ad Costs
Text ads are not only beneficial for the users but also for the advertisers as well. Earlier, most ads were banner ads. In order to make a change in the message, a completely new banner needs to be created.

Uploading a banner ad is also quite a task. Also, the cost incurred due to the use of bandwidth  makes it even more costly for the advertisers. These ads have to be reviewed  to make sure they are suitable for its target audience.

This situation is reversed by text advertising as it removes a huge cost which is associated with the process of posting ads on a site as it consumes negligible bandwidth. There are few chances for text ads to be considered as unsuitable for any kind of audience. The entire process of making and posting ads become much easier with a low cost.

This has brought about a change in the trend of the advertising buyer community. Most sites now have a large number of small advertisers in place of two or three big ones. This has reduced the extent of the dependency of websites on advertisers and also allowed the small sites to be able to advertise.

Text Ads and Context
The power of text ads goes beyond the fact that they are not graphical. The systems that serve the ads pay more interest to the context as compared to the graphics. They find the best match for the ads by comparing the ad’s text with the website’s text. This makes the ads highly targeted and thus increase the click-through rates.