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ABSTRACT Smart banners, or keyword–activated banners that are tied to internet user search keywords, are becoming increasingly popular with major search engines and their advertisers. Understanding how smart banners work best is a challenge facing the online advertising industry. This paper examines how specificity in the meaning of search keywords may affect the accuracy of banner matches. Through analysis of banner matches obtained from 12 major search engines, the authors found that as search keywords became more specific, search engines returned fewer exact banner matches and more general banner matches. Implications of these findings for search engines and their advertisers are discussed.
Dou et al. (2001) studied this question.