#55 - Context / Keyword Sensitive Joomla Banners

Here is a small tip, which has been causing be huge heartache for a very long time. Most websites are powered by a number of advertising banners, covering a range of topics. The difficult thing to do (at least until now), was to create advertising banners which are directly related to the content being displayed. It is quite common sense, that the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) for banners which are related to the current content woll be higher when the content matches the banner being displayed. This can be done using Joomla using the Search by Tags feature.

Andrew Eddie explains this feature in the following entry in the Joomla Community Portal. The article explains very clearly how this is done, but we will summarize how to do this quickly here:

Step 1: Create a Prefix for all banner advertising related keywords

Let's call it banner_ Go to Components > Banner > Banners, click on the Parameters icon, and enter banner_ in the Tag Prefix. Let's say you are advertising about loans, and credit cards on two different banners so we create banner_loans, and banner_creditcards

Step 2: Tag your banners with correct keywords

In this step, you create keywords which will associate content to the banners. In the Banner Manager, click on the banner which you want to link a keyword to. The last entry is Tags. Enter the tags you want related to this banner. To continue the above example, click on the Loans banner, and enter the tag banner_loans. Then click on the Credit Card banner, and enter banner_creditcard in the tag

Step 3: Link an article to a banner keyword

Once we have completed the above setup for all our banners, we start creating the links between the content articles and the banners. From the Article Manager (Content > Article Manager) browse to the article which you want to associate to a keyword. On the right, you have an area for metadata information. In the keywords, enter the keywords which link the current article to the banner. As per our example, go to the Credit Cards article(s) and put in the keyword banner_creditcards, and then go to the Loans articles and in the keywords put in banner_loans.

Step 4: Configure the Banner module to use Tags

The final step you need to do is to instruct the Banner module to use the tags you have just setup. Go to Extensions > Module Manager and click on the Banners module. Make sure the Search by Tags setting is set to Yes and save the module.

Sit back, and enjoy the increased revenue and CTRs

Thanks to Andrew Eddie for his contribution in the Joomla Community Portal: Putting those Pesky Banners in their Place. There are tons of useful information coming out of this portal, so make sure you visit it often!