{"id":12582,"date":"2023-08-17T13:25:39","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T20:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tegnacorpstage.wpengine.com\/advertise\/?p=12582"},"modified":"2024-01-11T10:42:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T17:42:21","slug":"what-is-contextual-advertising-why-it-matters-in-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tegna.com\/advertise\/contextual-advertising","title":{"rendered":"What is Contextual Advertising & Why It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is contextual advertising, and does it make sense for your brand\u2019s marketing strategy?<\/span><\/p>\n

In elementary school, you learned the importance of context clues – hints throughout a sentence or paragraph to help you understand a word or phrase you don\u2019t know. Contextual advertising is similar in that it uses context clues from a website to deliver relevant advertising to an interested and engaged audience to increase engagement and purchase.<\/span><\/p>\n

But contextual advertising can quickly become nuanced. What audiences should your brand target? How do you know what websites to align with? How much does it cost? How does it work? What are best practice tips? How do you get started?<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s find out.<\/span><\/p>\n

An Overview of Contextual Advertising<\/b><\/h2>\n

Contextual advertising is targeted advertising that delivers relevant ads to users based on the content they are currently viewing and focuses on the immediate actions of the user\u2019s online activity. For example, if you\u2019re reading an article about popular travel destinations and see a display ad for flights, hotels, or vacation packages, you\u2019ve been served contextual advertising.<\/span><\/p>\n

By aligning with a user\u2019s interests and immediate online needs, contextual advertising aims to increase the likelihood that a user will be engaged in the content, interested in the ad, click on it, make a purchase, or complete the desired call to action.<\/span><\/p>\n

Contextual advertising is used by advertisers for a few reasons:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The advertiser has a perceived notion of audience demographics reading the content – aka finance content is heavily consumed by more<\/span> affluent individuals<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The content indicates a buying behavior – a consumer reading about mattresses is likely in-market to buy a mattress.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Brand affinity towards a subject \u2013 aka a beer brand that wants to be associated with sports.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Brand safety<\/a> – a brand that has sensitivities to what content is suitable for their brand to be adjacent to. Contextual targeting allows them to control the alignment.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Contextual advertising is also a great digital complement to effective<\/span> broadcast and streaming TV campaigns<\/span><\/a>. TV and streaming advertising often rely on demographic targeting, which can be broad and reach a wide audience. Contextual advertising allows for more precise targeting and retargeting. It\u2019s cost-effective, and with a consistent message across platforms, brands can increase brand awareness, ad recall, engage users, and reinforce messaging to viewers.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What is a Contextual Targeting Strategy?<\/b><\/h2>\n

    There are two traditional strategies behind contextual targeting. When choosing which content you want your ad to be adjacent to, the choice is either done in categories (furniture) or by keyword present within the article (mattresses).<\/span><\/p>\n

    With the deprecation of cookies ahead of us, contextual advertising is being used more heavily to create audience segments and to continue to serve ads to those consumers based on previous behavior. For instance, let\u2019s say a consumer previously viewed content on mattresses. We can then determine that they are in the market to buy a mattress, and we will continue to serve ads to that consumer no matter what content they are currently viewing is related to mattresses or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

    How Contextual Targeting Works<\/b><\/h2>\n

    Contextual advertising involves a brand, a digital publisher, and a contextual management platform working together to achieve the basic goal of marketing: reaching the right people, at the right time, with the right message to encourage a desired action.<\/span><\/p>\n

    However, there are a few steps to take before automated systems can take over. These steps include categorizing content, creating audiences, and creating audience segments.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Categorizing Content<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Digital publishers categorize their content using specific taxonomies. Most publishers have their own taxonomy, such as TEGNA has S.S.T.S. (Subject > SubSubject > Topic > SubTopic) that each piece of our content is categorized with. An example would be Sports > NFL > Dallas Cowboys > Cowboys vs. Titans Game this weekend.<\/span>
    \n<\/span><\/p>\n

    However, the IAB also created an industry-standard called the<\/span> IAB Content Taxonomy<\/span><\/a>. This creates a standard in which all publishers may categorize their content, passing those signals to the buying platforms so that buyers may confidently place their ads adjacent to the content they desire.<\/span><\/p>\n

    <\/b>Seller Defined Audiences<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Next, publishers with first-party platforms (such as<\/span> TEGNA AudienceOne)<\/span><\/a> will create Seller Defined Audiences (SDA). These use previous consumer behaviors to create audience segments. At TEGNA, we note what content our consumers have viewed and make a probabilistic decision on that consumer being in an audience (i.e., in-market to buy a mattress)<\/span><\/p>\n

    <\/b>Creating Audience Segments<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Lastly, keyword contextual uses signals collected from third-party systems to create audience segments based on the keywords used in content that was previously or is currently being consumed. This type of contextual keyword is typically performed on the buy-side by a DSP. However, it is becoming more popular with publishers with their own first-party platforms.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Ad Delivery<\/b><\/h3>\n

    When ads are delivered to a user\u2019s browser, they are displayed in various formats. These include<\/span> native advertising<\/span><\/a>, display, advertising, programmatic, and in-video advertising.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Measurement and Optimization<\/b><\/p>\n

    Advertisers can track the performance of the delivered ads, including metrics like impressions, clicks, conversions, and engagement rates. You can use this data to analyze and evaluate your campaign’s effectiveness with a tool like<\/span> TEGNA Attribution<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and make informed decisions regarding future ad selection and optimization.<\/span><\/p>\n

    4 Benefits of Contextual Advertising<\/b><\/h2>\n

    Contextual advertising has several benefits, making it a valuable tool for reaching the right audience, driving engagement, and achieving advertising goals.<\/span><\/p>\n

    1. Respect User Privacy While Building Trust<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Consumers are more focused on privacy than ever before. While consumers are willing to share their data with companies for a better customer experience, they also have concerns. Recent studies have found:<\/span><\/p>\n