Contextual advertising such as AdSense (as opposed to pure search advertising) has suffered through a declining reputation. This ClickZ piece offers some hope for its effectiveness, with a selection of marketers agreeing the contextual conversion does not match search conversion, but that it is still a good buy if managed correctly. That means tracking results separately and paying the right price. One insight from the article: keywords that do best in search perform worst in a contextual setting, and vice versa.
