Always a key element in the marketing mix, contextual advertising, also known as contextual advertising, is experiencing something resembling a “second youth.”
In the course of the evolution of models and tools related to the world of advertising, contextual advertising has, in the past, seen the emergence of new targeting models based on third-party cookies, but today, in the face of their announced deprecation, it is making a comeback as an effective and high-performance model to enable advertisers to personalise their ads.
Confirmation also comes from a report published by Statista, according to which 56% of marketing experts interviewed consider contextual advertising a valid alternative to third-party cookies, so much so that the global contextual advertising market is expected to grow by over 13% by 2027.
But let’s clarify: what is contextual advertising, how does it work, and what are the advantages of its use in the marketing mix?
- Contextual advertising: what is it?
- Contextual advertising and contextual targeting: how it works
- contextual advertising: what are the advantages
- Contextual advertising with Blendee: create even more performing campaigns
Contextual advertising: what is it?
As anticipated, the term “contextual advertising” identifies a particular advertising model whose main objective is to allow advertisers to place ads in contexts where they can be most effective.
Nothing new on the surface: the principle behind contextual advertising is the same that has always governed the buying and selling of advertising space, but there is actually something more.
Unlike advertising models based on third-party cookies, contextual advertising aims to allow user targeting not based on behavioural, demographic, or browsing data but essentially on the context in which they are interacting.
The goal is to deliver relevant ads at the right time without being intrusive and fully respecting users’ privacy.
The goal is to deliver relevant ads at the right time without being intrusive and fully respecting users’ privacy.
To better understand the effectiveness of this advertising model, think of ads related to hotels or B&Bs shown within a blog or site dedicated to travel.
Contextual advertising and contextual targeting: how it works
By introducing the concept of “contextual advertising,” we have already partly addressed the topic of contextual targeting. While contextual advertising allows for ad delivery based on context, contextual targeting forms its foundation.
It allows the creation of vertical target audiences based on specific content.
As anticipated, user data does not come into play: at the heart of contextual advertising are crawlers that scan the content and metadata of web pages, classifying them based on the detected indicators. Thus, when a user visits a particular web page, ads are shown not based on the user’s socio-demographic characteristics but solely on the content and meaning of the page itself.
To outline the steps for an effective contextual advertising campaign, we find:
- content and keyword analysis using crawlers that detect textual content, images of the pages where the ad will be shown, including keywords;
- ad placement selected by advertising platforms based on the analysed content;
- user interaction expected when the ad is shown within the content the user is already viewing
With the contribution of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, contextual advertising campaigns are becoming increasingly precise, offering advertisers the great opportunity to continuously optimise their performance through ongoing analysis of CTR, frequency, and conversions.
contextual advertising: what are the advantages
As partly anticipated, in a context where the deprecation of third-party cookies is challenging the advertising world with new challenges, contextual advertising represents a first-rate alternative that allows good results in terms of effectiveness and performance, engaging users in appropriate contexts while preserving the privacy of their data.
- Respect for user data privacy
- Targeting in a world without cookies
- More attractive and relevant ads based on user interests
- Increased CTR and ROAS
- Advanced analysis and performance optimisation
- Brand Safety
Generally, we can observe that contextual advertising campaigns:
- are easy to implement;
- ensure brand safety and suitability;
- allow for the creation of ads that truly reflect the audience’s interests;
- are GDPR compliant and, as seen, independent of the cookie logic.
Contextual advertising with Blendee: create even more performing campaigns
Among the functionalities offered by Blendee is the ability to create effective and performing contextual advertising campaigns.
All this is related to the possibility of categorising content in an advanced way thanks to the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.
Natural language processing (NLP) deduces user interests based on the page’s content and allows for the proposal of content consistent with their behaviour.
In addition to the standard functionality, Blendee allows the implementation of advanced API functionality that allows the extraction of headwords and keywords and the creation of correlations in order to classify content more effectively: a considerable added value for publishers and advertisers who can more easily offer and purchase space to deliver more relevant messages.
In addition to the standard IAB first and second level taxonomies,
IPTC Media Topic, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Blendee allows exploiting Contexto, an API that returns real-time text classification according to predefined taxonomies and enables the creation of a custom taxonomy.
