Contextual Targeting Enables Marketers to Deal with Unpredictable Consumer Behavior
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, marketers are
witnessing a dramatic shift in the behavior of the consumers. Consumers are not
behaving in the way that marketers have expected them to do. Their behavior has
become unpredictable, inconsistent and erratic.
For example, consumers have stockpiled grocery items in
their pantries during the lockdown period to the extent that demand has
surpassed supply. Consumers have either made a large number of visits to
grocery stores or frequently procured essential items from e-commerce websites.
Marketers have observed that consumers are showing
less loyalty to brands, as they are filling up their pantries by buying
products they require from any brand. They just want to make sure that they
have enough goods to meet their requirements for a long time.
This new behavior pattern exhibited by consumers has a
good amount of deviation from the normal consumer behavior that the marketers
are accustomed to. Before the coronavirus pandemic, marketers could easily
predict consumers’ behavior and show them ads on the basis of the behavioral
data tracked and collected by them.
This form of advertising, known as behavioral advertising, makes use of third-party cookies and collects user data such as
websites visited, webpages viewed, time spent on website/web pages, visit
frequency, clicked links, products viewed, purchase history, etc. This data
helps marketers to create rich profile of consumers. But in the difficult times
such as the coronavirus pandemic, when consumers do not show consistent
behavior, the third-party cookies and consumer profiles created by marketers
fail to predict what a consumer will be interested in buying next.
Marketers also rely on geo-targeting for serving ads
to users. Geo-targeting refers to the practice of delivering ads to consumers
on the basis of their geographical locations. It is often used by marketers for
advertising to local prospects and help local businesses that depend on foot
traffic such as restaurants and brick-and-mortar stores to increase sales. But
during the coronavirus crisis, geo-targeting is also not delivering success to
marketers as people are refraining from going out of their homes except for
essential items.
Thus, consumers’ behavioral and geographical data,
which is considered highly valuable by marketers under normal circumstances,
loses its importance during the times of a crisis, as its use fails marketers
in achieving targeted results.
In this scenario, it is the contextual targeting that
acts as the savior for marketers. Contextual targeting has emerged as a very
effective way of advertising. Contextual targeting involves placement of ads on
the basis of the content the user is actively engaging with and has nothing to
do with users’ past behavior, purchasing habits, and their locations. It makes
use of the context of the digital content that a user is consuming rather than
his or her data profile.
Traditional contextual targeting based on keywords and
topics has produced results less than optimal as it involves contextual fails.
For example, if an ad of a burger appears against the content talking about the
harmful effects of fast food, then it will severely harm the image of the
burger brand.
But this is not the case now; the advent of new
technology has changed contextual targeting radically. AI-powered contextual
advertising that makes use of computer vision has emerged as the smartest and the
most effective way of using context for targeting audience. Through computer
vision, in-video contexts such as faces, emotions, objects, logos, actions and
scenes are detected with high accuracy, enabling marketers to serve ads on the
basis of what the user is interested in at the moment. With computer vision
powered contextual advertising, the chances of user clicking or viewing the ads
are very bright.
During the coronavirus pandemic, not only the
consumers’ behavior has become erratic, they are also overwhelmed with the coronavirus
content. They do not want to see brand messages appearing next to mortality-related
coronavirus content. For marketers, it is a challenge to distinguish between
safe and unsafe coronavirus content. Computer vision powered contextual
advertising not only provides highly context relevant ad placement, but also
accurately filters out harmful, unsafe or unsuitable content such as mortality-related
coronavirus news. Apart from the recognized unsafe categories, marketers can custom
define unsuitable contexts unique to each brand. Thus, computer vision-based
targeting ensures true brand suitability.
In crisis such as coronavirus pandemic, when
consumers’ past behavior data becomes useless for marketers, computer
vision-powered contextual targeting serves as the most effective way to serve
ads in a truly brand suitable environment.
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