Question-and-answer site Quora, which first launched an advertising product last year, recently introduced a self-serve ad platform.
Advertisers will now be able to create text-based ads and mobile app install ads on their own (i.e., without direct support from a Quora representative), and deliver those ads in a "native" fashion (so interspersed between items of the site's content feed) on the platform.
Various types of targeting are available to advertisers including topic targeting (how Quora categorizes its questions and answers), geographic targeting and platform (desktop, mobile) targeting.
Once advertisers target an ad, they will be able to choose a budget, set their CPC bid and then make performance adjustments as necessary.
There's no question that the capabilities of Quora's new system pale in comparison to advertising offerings from the likes of Google or Facebook (in terms of both targeting or reach), but it does put the site in line with others including Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest and others who have all made moves in the past few years to produce competitive products.
The upside here is really that when users are on Quora they are looking for information and answers and that's a good environment for advertisers to be.
