If you run a business you must advertise. It doesn't matter what size business you have, you must advertise to let others know what you are selling. Advertising is what gets people to your website or to your door. This is the only way you can make money with your business.

As a matter of fact, advertising is so important, that companies allocate a huge amount of their budget toward advertising and marketing. They may use many ways to get their product to the eyes and ears of the consumer such as text ads in magazines and newspapers or large ad space in newspapers.

One avenue they may take advantage of is online advertising. When companies go online to sell their products, they find not only do they boost their sales, but they can also advertise in most places for little or no cost to them. This helps them in two ways: it gets the product into the hands of the consumer and the company profits more because of less overhead.

There are many ways to advertise online. Companies may use pop-ups or banners. They may use software that extracts email addresses from websites or rent lists to promote their products. These are all methods that have been used in the past, but there is a newer method that is being used today. This method is known as contextual advertising. Contextual advertising is a technologically based method that allows advertisers to send real-time targeted messages to consumers.

This is not a method where users click on some kind of banner or text link. Instead it is a better method because it has been proven to work. Contextual advertising works by using the user's online habits and behavior to know what the person is looking for. This way only the ads the user wants to look at is seen.

Search engines are doing it now. Websites are picking up the idea and going with it. They know this type of advertising works. The next time you go to Google and type in a keyword, see what ads come up with the search results.

Advertisers realize this is the best way to reach their customers because they are targeting only the ones who are interested in their product or service. They show only the ads that interest their customers. Advertisers even target certain URLs based on what their customers click on while browsing websites. They keep these keystrokes recorded so they know what their customers are doing and looking for. This results in more interest, which in turn creates more sales.

An example of contextual advertising is Google's AdSense program. Another one is Content Match by Yahoo! Search Marketing. Another company that uses contextual advertising is Miva (formerly known as FindWhat).

Contextual advertising is out there and is being used. The companies using it have proved they can make money online using this system. You can too.