Tim from Silverbullet explores contextual targeting in the Adtech space & dissects the role of the same in the life of a savvy digital marketer & advertiser.
Today’s increasing privacy concerns, coupled with the cookie’s demise, means marketers now need to deliver more personalised campaigns, in real-time and at scale
More importantly, they need to demonstrate empathy and present their messaging in brand-safe environments. This is where the power of contextual targeting comes into play.
Contextual targeting is a way to target relevant audiences using keywords and topics derived from the content around ad inventory, that doesn’t require a cookie or another identifier. Here are some of the key benefits of contextual targeting, and why it’s a must-have for any savvy digital marketer or advertiser.
1. Can provide context beyond text
Truly effective contextual targeting engines are able to process all types of content that exist on a page, to give true 360-degree guidance as to the page’s semantic meaning.
Advanced contextual targeting analyses text, audio, video and imagery to create contextual targeting segments which are then matched to particular advertiser requirements, so that advertising appears in a relevant and appropriate environment.
So for example, a news article about the Australian Open may show Serena Williams wearing sponsorship partner Nike’s tennis shoes, and then an ad for sports shoes could appear within the relevant environment. In this instance, the environment is relevant to the product.
Some advanced contextual targeting tools even have video recognition capabilities, where they can analyse each frame of video content, identify logos or products, recognise brand safe images, with audio transcript informing it all, to provide an optimum environment for marketing within and around that piece of video content. This includes, importantly, every frame within the video, and not just the title, thumbnail, and tags. This same type of analysis is also applied across audio content and imagery, to ensure the site as a whole is brand-safe.
For instance, a contextual targeting tool can analyse a video that contains images of a beer brand, identify through the audio & video that it is a brand-safe environment, and inform the marketers that it is an optimum channel for and marketing content about beer to appear to the relevant target audience.
Older tools might only analyse video titles or audio, and don’t delve deeply into imagery, meaning ads could end up in an inappropriate environment. For example, the title of a video might be innocuous and deemed ‘safe’ by an older contextual tool, like ‘How to make great beer’ however the content of the video itself might be severely inappropriate, such as a video of underage teenagers making beer – now brand advertising in that environment is something no marketer can currently afford.
Some solutions have built an industry-first contextual marketplace that enables select technology partners to plug in their proprietary algorithms as an additional layer of targeting, and offer brands protection from racist, inappropriate or toxic content – that can be applied to ensure brand safety and suitability are managed correctly.
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