05:50    Silver Push

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Contextual Targeting Boosts Ad Relevance, User Engagement and Campaign Performance

Contextual targeting offers a smart and powerful way to advertisers for promoting brands and their products, while to publishers, it offers an effective way for monetizing their content. In the era of online privacy regulations and cookie-less advertising, industry experts predict it to become the mainstream advertising approach.     

Contextual targeting involves placement of those ads that are in line with the context of the content the user is engaging with. Whether an ad is placed against a video or textual content, if it is in context to what a user is watching or reading, he/she finds it relevant, less annoying, and more appealing to see it or click it.

Traditionally, contextual advertising is practiced by placing ads on the basis of keywords and topics. But this approach has its own shortcomings, for example, keywords cannot fully reflect the users’ current state of mind. Keyword-based contextual advertising often results in sub-optimal campaigns.

Using artificial intelligence for contextual targeting offers far better results in comparison to conventional keyword-based ad targeting. This is because AI advertising does not follow the keyword-based approach, but rather uses machine learning and computer vision to identify contexts in content, and then serve the ads that are contextually relevant. Thus, contextual targeting using artificial intelligence advertising technology boosts the relevance factor in ad targeting.

Video is becoming the most sought-after content on the internet. For marketers, video advertising is becoming one of the most effective ways to reach consumers. Computer vision powered in-video contextual advertising has emerged as the most effective and safe way to promote brands and their products by leveraging the popularity and reach of online video content

Computer vision powered in-video contextualadvertising works by identifying contexts in videos such as faces, emotions, objects, logos, scenes and activities. Relevant ads are served that are in line with the detected contexts, thus making the ads more engaging to the users of online video platforms such as YouTube.

Research has shown significantly positive impact of the contextual video advertising on the performance of ad campaigns in comparison to displaying ads irrespective of the context of the video content being watched.

Contextual in-video advertising offers significant benefits over non-contextual video advertising including the following -

·       When contextually relevant in-video ad is served, the ad receives higher attention from users in comparison to random ads. The chances of user interaction with the ad increases.  

          Contextual advertising enhances a brand’s outreach, awareness and perception. A brand’s image improves in terms of quality, value for money, and appeal. Users find the brand to be more reliable and authentic. 

·       By displaying contextually relevant in-video ads, which are more engaging and less annoying than random ads, the perception of the websites or online video platforms that host videos also improves in the minds of users.    

·       Brands are able to convert more people into customers, sales increase, and return on investment (ROI) gets boosted.      

Contextual advertising dramatically increases user engagement and reach for brands by serving consumers ads that are relevant to the content they are engaging with. Overall, contextual targeting is beneficial for all - brands, agencies, publishers, and consumers.