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Taken Out of Context? You might be part of a contextual ad program without even knowing it.

By Catherine Seda

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Are you investing in pay-per-click advertising on search engines such as Google or Overture? If so, your paid listings might appear on other Web sites-but not on their search results page, and not for the keywords you bid on. Your ads may appear on site content pages deemed relevant to your ads.

A few search engines automatically enroll their keyword search advertisers in a "contextual advertising" program. Let's say you're bidding on keywords related to the phrase "dog collar," and you reference this phrase in your ad listing copy. Your listing may appear on the dog page of PetPlace.com(under "Ads by Google"), a publisher of Google's contextual advertising program.

Appearing on Web pages instead of in the sites' search results is an extra shot of visibility. Contextual advertisers don't wait for consumers to query the keywords they've bid on. But how do contextual ads perform?