Everything old is new again and contextual advertising is once again a place of interest for online marketers. The reason? regarding the use of cookies third-party privacy concerns have greatly limited how they use user tracking information to deliver advertising messages. So you have to look for alternatives.
Although it can be considered as an old type of advertising, it is quite possible that contextual advertising will gradually become one of the most effective methods for targeting online ads to the correct users. All thanks to the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advances in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Contextual advertising vs. third party cookies
Contextual advertising is one that places online ads on web pages based on the theme and keywords of each of these sites. That is, assign the ads to web pages that have some sort of direct relevance to the products or services that the advertiser is promoting. What comes to be “content-oriented advertising”.
The interesting thing here is that, unlike what happens with third-party cookies, contextual advertising achieves at the same time respect people’s privacy and return on investment brand advertising. For example, contextual targeting Leverage source data and not those of third parties, which, logically, allows users to maintain the privacy of their data.
Similarly, advertisers are finding that this type of advertising better indicates real-time user intent (book a flight, buy a bike, do the shopping, etc.). Unlike tracking cookies, which are based on consumer behavior over a wide 30-day window.
Targeted advertising and Artificial Intelligence
Both Artificial Intelligence and NLP have made this type of segmented advertising more complex. Advances in recent years allow a very precise categorization of web content. Its algorithms allow among other things:
- better identify the content topics
- analyze the web page ‘sentiment’
- Understand the nuances of languagedistinguish homonyms
- Determine content and tone of images and videos
- Automatically configure creative of the announcement inside of the context
A study to show if contextual advertising is effective
With all this information, the Artificial Intelligence company GumGum has conducted research to determine the extent to which contextual advertising has managed to become an effective method ad targeting with machine learning and NLP.
The neural and emotional reaction of the participants to certain advertisements was evaluated.
For the study, 60 people from the USA, Japan and those who had to read 6 articles on different topics. Each of these items included 3 ads of different relevance regarding the content of the article – for example, a website about soccer with 3 ads about sportswear, drinks and electronic products.
With this, the researchers used biometric sensors to control various aspects related to the reaction of the participants. This is: brain activity, emotions, attention and also measure the response of your skin to stimuli. No performance metrics taken into account like the or conversion rates.
Contextual advertising is more remembered and increases the purchase intention
Overall, the study found that more contextually relevant ads had a 43% more attention by the participants. Also, they were 2.2 most remembered points and were considered a 10% more attractive than even the general content of the article.
Most important of all this is that the most relevant ads got a significant increase in purchase intent. In any case, as pointed out from the study, content is not the only context to consider. The platform, device, time, or location where users view an ad can also affect their response to it.
Use contextual advertising to improve advertising objectives
In short, advertisers are being forced to change their advertising strategy as privacy policies limit the use of tracking cookies. Studies like this indicate that this data loss is not as catastrophic as some think. Especially if marketers begin to understand that the relationship between their advertising objectives and the content with which potential consumers interact is essential.
If this happens, there are opportunities to improve effectiveness of advertising messages.
Image:
Stay informed of the most relevant news on our news channel