Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is just the big fancy name for Google AdSense.  Granted, AdSense isn't the only game in town, but it's the most prominent.  Who hasn't seen these blue-and-green text-based ads on a website or blog?

Contextual advertising is not always the most lucrative form of advertising, but it sure is the easiest.  Nothing could be easier than slapping down a snippet of code on your webpage and letting the ad network take over and do the rest.  From the content on your page, the ad network derives the basic idea of what's happening (i.e., garden tools, Xbox 360 games, dog food, etc.) and serves up ads that, hopefully, are about garden tools, Xbox, and dog food, respectively.