In-text advertising

In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific words within the text of a webpage are associated with advertising content.


Description

Although contextual advertising in general refers to the inclusion of advertisements adjacent to relevant online context (e.g., Google AdSense), in-text advertising places hyperlinks directly into the text of the webpage. Most in-text advertising has the following characteristics:

1. The text associated with an advertisement is identified by a double-underline to differentiate it from regular hyperlinks.
2. An in-page window containing advertising content appears when the cursor is positioned over the corresponding text.


Criticism

The use of this type of advertising in news and journalism websites has been criticized by journalism ethics counselors as "ethically problematic at the least and potentially quite corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility."[1] However, publishers such as the Indianapolis Star who use in-text advertising have reported that despite early objections by some readers, such complaints have "tapered off".[2]