How to Place Targeted Ads with eHow

eHow has established themselves as a go-to resource for instructional articles.  According to quantcast, ehow.com is, “a top 50 site that reaches over 16 million U.S. monthly people.”  The library of extensive articles and how to videos is attractive to search engines, and garners top organic positions for eHow.com in the search results.  In addition, eHow does a great job of driving traffic to their site via email re-marketing and social media marketing (sharing / bookmarking widgets).  There are a handful of options for getting more visibility for your ads on eHow.com.
The screen capture below highlights the sponsorship opportunities available on a typical article page.   

Sponsored “text links” provide relevant ads and can use a number of formats including video as shown above.  Google AdSense is clearly a valuable stream of revenue, evident by the Google custom search box at the top and bottom of every page, as well as reserved ad space along the left and right columns and bottom of article text.  The main content on the page also incorporates strategic text links.  When hovered over with a mouse, some links provide organic search results powered by Bing, specific to the linked text.  Others give visitors an advertisement, as displayed below in the link for the text “forms of diabetes”.

eHow provides similar sponsorship opportunities on their How to Video pages.  Pre-roll and post-roll video sponsorship is available, as well as category-specific content advertising.

eHow also appears to work with advertisers on custom offerings, as evidenced by inclusion of a Gillette link in the secondary navigation, highlighted below.

 
Gillette Sponsored link on eHow

For advertisers who are not ready to commit substantial minimum budgets, Google AdWords provides a quick and easy entry.  Being that you set your daily budget and desired cost per click (or cost per impression), it is very manageable via the AdWords interface.  Let’s say you are an ecommerce website selling a niche accessory for cars and trucks.  Here is a 3 step process for targeting specific visitors on ehow.com.

1. Create a Placement Targeted Campaign in Google AdWords for eHow.com only.
2. Add (broad) keywords to help define where your ads will be placed (car repair, truck repair, car stereo installation, etc).
3. Edit Audience Settings to exclude specified age and gender demographics, if desired.

To help ensure success for your new campaign, use ad creative that speaks to your target audience.  Talk to the (male) consumer who is actively researching how to repair, install, etc. a piece of equipment for their vehicle.  eHow accepts all ad formats available via the AdWords interface (text, image, overlay video, flash & rich media), so advertisers can be creative with their ads and even customize color palette and images for a specific placement / website.