Online Advertising: Hyperlink (or Link)

Posted by Bart on October 24, 2010

Everybody knows the hyperlinks (or links) because one sees them everyday while surfing on the web: these are for example these words (but it can be images too) that are underlined or in a different color and that you can click on to upload another page or another document. But how are they actually built and how do they work?

To understand Online Advertising techniques, it’s important to clearly understand what are hyperlinks.

Wikipedia says:

A hyperlink (or link) is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks, and is commonly viewed with a computer. A software system for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system, and to create a hyperlink is to hyperlink (or simply to link). A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext.

A hyperlink has an anchor, which is the location within a document from which the hyperlink can be followed; the document containing a hyperlink is known as its source document. The target of a hyperlink is the document, or location within a document, to which the hyperlink leads. Users can activate and follow the link when its anchor is shown, usually by touching or clicking on the anchor with a pointing device. Following the link has the effect of displaying its target, often with its context.

In some hypertext, hyperlinks can be bidirectional: they can be followed in two directions, so both ends act as anchors and as targets. More complex arrangements exist, such as many-to-many links.

The most common example of hypertext today is the World Wide Web: webpages contain hyperlinks to webpages.

Here is an example of an Hyperlink:
<a href=”http://www.costperwhat.com”>Link to CostPerWhat?</a>.
The source is the text “Link to CostPerWhat?” and the target is the website “http://www.costperwhat.com”.

This link inserted in a web page becomes: Link to CostPerWhat?

A click on the link will open a new page or a new document, inside this page or on another page. This is the basis of “browsing” the World Wide Web.

In Online Advertising we also call this link a Redirect Link.