Think how annoying it'll be to search for running shoes and get results for Texas colleges or triple-A batteries.
These results wouldn’t be very helpful. It will make much more sense if the search engine provides relevant links, like the Nike website and a map of shoe stores near your location. Now, apply this concept of convenient relevance that search engines provide to advertising.
Similar to search engines, contextual advertising works by targeting keywords that are relevant to the current webpage rather than using data about the visitor. Businesses use cross-channel advertising software, ad network tools, or demand-side platforms (DSPs) to publish contextual ads across search, mobile, display, and social.
Contextual advertising refers to placing ads on web pages based on the context of a webpage. It uses contextual targeting factors such as keywords, website topics, location, or weather to show relevant contextual ads to potential customers.
While it’s extremely prominent on the internet, contextual advertising existed long before. Since the dawn of time (or since advertisements were produced in these mediums), beauty magazines have had advertisements for makeup, sports network channels have had advertisements for athletic wear, and radio stations have had local advertisements. Today, we’ve integrated it into the internet.
Contextual advertising uses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to offer several benefits beyond cookieless targeting. Check out why digital marketing practitioners prefer contextual targeting.
Now, let’s look at the types of contextual advertising.
Contextual ads can take many forms, depending on where they appear.
Now, onto the ways, you can contextually target audiences.
Advertisers rely on the following types of targeting while running contextual ads.
Many often confuse contextual advertising with behavioral targeting, but they aren’t the same.
Contextual advertising targets users based on the topic and content of web pages they browse on the internet. Contextual ads use both keyword and topic targeting to show relevant ads on the web page a user is on.
Behavioral targeting shows ads based on the actions users take before reaching a web page. For example, they may have visited articles, clicked on product landing page links, or read product reviews before landing on a web page.
Behavioral advertising has become increasingly advanced to the point that people have begun to float theories that Amazon’s Alexa can hear our whispered secrets and provide suggested advertisements based off of what we say. A method that was supposed to make advertisements feel more catered to us and our interests has become downright creepy.
Plus, you can’t show relevant ads solely based on past user behavior. That’s where contextual advertising comes in. Plus, contextual targeting offers everything you need to eliminate the struggle with privacy policies and regulations.
Contextual advertising looks at the content of webpages and other platforms and uses the context to determine whether the advertisement will be placed, determined by selected keywords. More simply: rather than looking at personal data, contextual advertising looks at web page data. Let’s look at the step-by-step process below.
An advertising system can’t place ads without knowing your target audience. So, you need to set relevant topics and keywords that users may search.
Once you include all the relevant topics and keywords, an ad network can easily make an informed decision about when to display your ads.
Once you place the order, the ad publisher analyzes the website content of all sites on its network to find the most relevant matches. The ad network also considers web page content, language, link structure, and page structure. When your keywords and topics fall in the same ad group or not, your ads will show up on relevant pages.
Display networks also let you choose broad or specific reach. When you choose broad reach, your ads will show up based on topics you target. Specific reach means your ads show up only when the content of a webpage matches both topics and keyword targeting.
After analyzing the context of relevant web content, the display network will find a suitable placement for your ad.
Below are the different ways you can reach target audiences with contextual advertising.
With privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and major search engines scrapping third-party cookies, you can’t simply track user journeys across sites and target them.
GDPR is a regulation in European law that enforces data protection and privacy for citizens in the European Union and European Economic Area. This regulation has frightened advertisers who typically use personal data to determine the placement of their advertisements into reverting back to contextual advertising. Additionally, the California Consumer Privacy Act offers users more control over the user data businesses can collect.
The greater desire for privacy has made contextual advertising the go-to marketing strategy for advertisers. Because of being privacy-friendly, contextual ads can still collect important first-party data points without using cookies. Plus, you can personalize these ads without being invasive.
The benefits of contextual advertising strategy make some question why we would ever move into behavioral advertising, to begin with. Behavioral advertising is freakishly personal, which is a benefit for some, but look at what contextual advertising could be doing for you:
When it comes to rules and regulations, contextual advertising complies with the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act without a hitch. As long as the company isn’t collecting any personal data and is providing advertisements strictly based on data about the website and pages (keywords, URL, content), there is little risk in regards to privacy.
Behavioral advertisements, while personal, can sometimes appear in places that don’t make much sense. Contextual advertisements, on the other hand, have been interpreted as complementary to the web pages they appear on; they work in tandem with the content.
No, really. The topic of unnerving behavioral advertising has been discussed above. It’s much more reassuring to see an advertisement for Gatorade on a blog about sports rather than an advertisement for that porch light you were just talking about buying. Contextual ads are therefore received in a more positive light.
The logic behind contextual ads is very apparent. If someone is reading about traveling to Asia, showing them an advertisement for goldfish makes it seem as though the advertisement is being displayed without purpose. However, someone reading about traveling to Asia who sees an advertisement about a sale on plane tickets makes much more sense and has an increased chance of being clicked because the user was already searching for something along those lines.
Contextual advertising solutions have been paying off both literally and figuratively, which means it isn’t going away any time soon. In fact, it’s only going to advance.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and augmented reality comes the rise of digital advertising being more precisely catered to you without having to look into your personal history.
Billboards with advertisements based on the type of car you drive, smartwatches with advertisements for rain boots as storm clouds loom overhead — who knows what else? Everything makes more sense with a little context. Keep your eyes peeled: augmented reality is going to be applied to much more than just advertising.
Check out the advertising techniques marketers use to stand out and attract audiences.
This article was originally published in 2021. It has been updated with new information.
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